Founded in 1995, Virginia Organizing brings people together to address issues that affect the quality of life in their local communities.

Virginia Organizing coordinates civic engagement and direct action on many different issues at all levels from the local county Board of Supervisors to the White House.

Organizers and leaders recruit new members and identify issue priorities through door-to-door canvassing, phone banks, 1-to-1 conversations, and community meetings.

Other notable issue campaigns include opposing predatory lending, fighting for restoration of voting rights for former-felons, immigration reform, and protecting Medicare and Social Security.

At the state level, Virginia Organizing publicly supported adding sexual orientation and gender to existing Virginia hate crime laws in the 1998 General Assembly, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond set up a Community Development Advisory Council to deal with issues concerning low-income and working-class people.

As Virginia Organizing became more involved in civic engagement, it and other groups pushed Governor Mark Warner to make major changes to the process of restoration of voting rights in 2002, reducing the application from thirteen pages to one for former non-violent felons.