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Chapter 2 places the new generation of internet-mediated organizations into historical context, emphasizing the substantive importance of the new communications technologies. Building upon the works of Skocpol (2003), Bimber (2003), Bosso (2005), Berry (1999), and others, the chapter draws parallels between the well-studied “interest group explosion” of the 1970s and the rise of “netroots” political associations today. Both are predicated on changes to the technological environment, enabling changes in membership and fundraising regimes. Shifts in these regimes facilitate opportunities for a new set of political actors to experiment with novel structures for collective action. This transition can be properly understood as a “disruptive innovation,” in which longstanding organizations are displaced as the “market” for political mobilization is fundamentally redefined (Christensen 1997). After introducing the historical analogue, the chapter provides a detailed analysis of MoveOn.org, highlighting the innovations in staff structure, membership, fundraising, and strategy that have made it such an important force in American politics today. The chapter concludes by discussing the disruptive fundraising challenges that the MoveOn Effect poses for legacy advocacy groups. Drawing upon data from the Membership Communications Project dataset and new research by the Monitor Institute, it highlights the generational differences in online fundraising between new groups and old.

This chapter by Peter Ling shows that SNCC ceased to be a primarily student-run organization after 1962, shed its philosophical commitment to nonviolence by 1966, and had always experienced tension between its coordination role and its cultural preference for field office independence. By examining attendance lists at major SNCC meetings from 1960 through 1964, it then traces a shifting organizational membership to argue that there were several SNCCs rather than one. In its assessment, SNCC's evolution reflected a process not of individuals changing through experience of movement activism but of different individuals exerting influence at different times. Challenging conventional understanding of the internal stresses resulting from the influx of student volunteers for the Freedom Summer project, it suggests that the newcomers only aggravated existing volatility and inchoateness.