Faith in Florida is a 2025 partner in the Rx Foundation’s Building Capacity for Health Advocacy grant program. This program supports organizations that are strengthening the leadership, systems, and infrastructure necessary to advance health equity in complex political environments.
In Florida, where legislative decisions routinely shape access to healthcare, housing stability, public education, and economic security, health advocacy cannot rely on rapid-response campaigns alone. It requires durable civic infrastructure.
Faith in Florida is building exactly that.
Building for Scale in a State That Demands It
When Pastor Rhonda Thomas talks about organizing in Florida, she does not begin with electoral wins or messaging strategies. She begins with scale.
“Organizers cannot cover this state,” she explains. “Not Miami-Dade. Not Broward. Not the Panhandle. So we had to ask ourselves — what are we building that lasts?”
For years, Faith in Florida organized primarily through congregations — social justice ministries in Black churches, synagogues, and faith-based coalitions. That foundation remains strong.
But the model has evolved.
“We don’t define what community is supposed to look like,” Pastor Rhonda says. “We look at where people already trust each other. Then we build structure there.”
That shift has led to a statewide framework designed around distributed leadership rather than centralized organizing.
In 2025, Faith in Florida trained 800 congregations in structured leadership development. The goal now is to support those congregations as active leadership teams while launching an additional 300 teams across professions, campuses, and community networks.
That means more than 1,100 organized centers of leadership across Florida.
This is not expansion for visibility. It is expansion for durability.
When Listening Changes the Plan
The organization’s approach sharpened last year during a series of listening sessions with Black men across South Florida.
“We weren’t launching a campaign,” Pastor Rhonda recalls. “We were listening.”
What emerged were conversations about mental health strain, economic pressure, and a level of stress that many participants had not publicly articulated before.
“Black men told us they carry stress differently. And there’s another layer right now.”
Instead of treating the sessions as engagement events, Faith in Florida convened a regional summit across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. Participants showed up ready to speak honestly about vulnerability, instability, and responsibility.
But the summit was not the end point.
From those conversations, the organization formalized structured teams — with defined leadership roles, accountability, and a mandate to expand outreach.
“If it matters,” Pastor Rhonda says, “we organize it.”
Listening became infrastructure.
Scaling Beyond Congregations
Faith in Florida began in congregational organizing — social justice ministries in Black churches, synagogues, and faith-based institutions.
That foundation remains, but the model has widened.
Today they are building:
- Nurses organizing around hospital systems and Medicaid expansion
- Educators aligning around public education
- Haitian leaders responding to immigration enforcement
- LGBTQ leaders coordinating safety efforts
- HBCU-based teams cultivating campus leadership
“In 2025, we trained 800 congregations,” Pastor Rhonda says. “Now imagine if each one becomes a leadership hub.”
The goal is 800 congregational teams and 300 additional community-based teams.
More than 1,100 structured centers of leadership statewide.
That is so much more than a campaign strategy, it’s infrastructure.
Youth Leadership as Intergenerational Continuity
For Faith in Florida, youth engagement is not an accessory to the work.
It is continuity.
“We are intentional about passing the mantle,” Pastor Rhonda says. “Not later. Now.”
Young people participate in community organizing, political education, and structured leadership development. They facilitate candidate forums. They draft their own questions. They shape public conversations about the issues affecting their families and neighborhoods.
“When candidates tell me, ‘You trained them well,’” Pastor Rhonda says, “I tell them, ‘No. Those are their questions.’”
That distinction matters.
Faith in Florida does not recruit or groom young people to run for office. The focus is civic formation — building organizers, facilitators, advocates, and community leaders who understand systems and know how to move within them.
“Young people understand what’s happening,” she says. “They live it.”
Over time, some choose to pursue elected leadership.
A 21-year-old who developed through Faith in Florida’s organizing work later ran for commissioner in Pasco County and won.
A 30-year-old engaged in the leadership network secured a school board seat.
Another emerging leader is now running for mayor.
One college student who began in Faith in Florida’s youth organizing pipeline raised $75,000 in under six months through grassroots fundraising, built a base of monthly sustainers, and later helped coordinate hurricane relief efforts beyond Florida.
“She’s been directly impacted by gun violence, mass incarceration, and immigration,” Pastor Rhonda says. “And she chose to lead.”
Faith in Florida invests in young people as organizers first — grounding them in community work, political education, and shared responsibility. Over time, that experience expands how they see themselves and what feels possible.
When young people are trusted with real leadership, the impact does not stay inside an organization. It carries into school boards, city halls, campuses, congregations, and neighborhoods.
That is how change becomes generational.
Turning Policy Threats into Organizing Models
When African American history instruction was diluted in Florida classrooms, Faith in Florida did not retreat.
“We said, if it’s not happening there, we’ll teach it ourselves.”
Congregations led structured teaching sessions. Toolkits were created. Multi-racial participation grew. One white congregation adopted the curriculum as an act of accountability.
What began locally is now used in more than 500 congregations across 31 states.
“You build something rooted in truth and relationship,” she says. “And it travels.”
The curriculum became more than education. It became political formation infrastructure.
What This Model Reveals
Several principles emerge clearly from Faith in Florida’s work:
Listening is strategic.
You cannot organize what you have not heard.
Structure builds confidence.
Young leaders accelerate when responsibility is real.
Geographic alignment multiplies power.
Cross-county coordination creates scale.
Intergenerational trust must be designed.
Different generations require intentional containers.
Moments must be formalized.
If a response is not systematized, it fades.
Leadership density determines durability.
More leaders create resilience.
Relationships sustain what urgency cannot.
People stay where they are known.
Building What Florida Does Not Yet Have
Pastor Rhonda often references states with decades of civic infrastructure.
“They didn’t inherit that,” she says. “They built it.”
Florida is building.
“We’re still testing. We haven’t perfected it. But we’re serious about longevity.”
Through its participation in the Rx Foundation’s Building Capacity for Health Advocacy program, Faith in Florida is strengthening the leadership pipelines, systems, and relational networks necessary to sustain health equity advocacy in a volatile political environment.
The teams are forming.
The leaders are emerging.
The structure is taking shape.
And in Florida, that is how power becomes durable.
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