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RACI (Responsibility Assignment)

Summary

A RACI matrix assigns, for each task or decision, who is Responsible (does it), Accountable (owns it — exactly one person), Consulted (gives input) and Informed (kept in the loop) — the tool that kills I thought you were doing that in coalitions.

Body

RACI is a project-management matrix developed in business PM practice and now standard in coalitions and large campaign teams. Each row is a task or decision; each column is a named person or role; each cell is one of four letters:

  • Responsible — does the work. There can be multiple R’s.
  • Accountable — owns the outcome. There is exactly one A per row.
  • Consulted — gives input before the work is done or the decision is made.
  • Informed — kept in the loop after the work is done or the decision is made.

The single-A discipline is the entire point: more than one A per row means no one is truly accountable; zero A’s means no one owns the outcome. The Commons Library’s organising modules treat the RACI as the tool that kills ambiguity in coalitions, where role-clarity is the difference between the campaign moving and stalling at every handoff [source: commons-library]. The same source recommends the RACI as part of the governance layer — every recurring decision type should have a named decider, not a committee-by-default.

A useful RACI also has two practical properties:

  • Per row, per decision type. Not one giant RACI for the whole campaign — a RACI per recurring decision (public statements, budget reallocations, escalation steps, response to opposition moves).
  • Reviewed when people change. The RACI is rebuilt when a lead changes, not when someone has to ask who’s doing this?

A common failure mode is to treat the RACI as a one-shot exercise produced at kick-off and never revised. The Commons Library warns that a RACI that goes out of date is worse than no RACI, because the team acts on it as if it were current [source: commons-library].

Use it for

Killing I thought you were doing that in coalitions; clarifying who owns a decision in a multi-team campaign; writing the governance rules for recurring decision types; onboarding a new team member mid-campaign.

Worked examples

  • coalition-of-immokalee-workers-campaign-against-taco-bell — the CIW’s RACI at the campaign’s 2001 launch: the Farmworker role held accountability for the worker-facing decisions, the Coalition role held accountability for the consumer-facing decisions, the Allies role held accountability for the faith-community outreach; the campaign’s coalition-with-allies structure depended on the RACI clarity.
  • Coalition RACI pattern (no matching case study page on this wiki): the lead role holds accountability for the campaign’s overall direction; the member roles hold accountability for their organisation’s contribution. A coalition without a RACI defaults to committee-by-unanimity, which is the failure mode RACI is designed to prevent.

Open Questions

  • 2026-06-23 — The locally fetched RAW for [[commons-library|sources/commons-library]] does not use the term “RACI” by name. Re-fetch a deeper Commons Library organising chapter or a Seeds for Change / MobLab project-management guide that covers RACI before promoting this page.

Learn more

FAQ

What is RACI?

RACI is a project-management matrix that assigns, for each task or decision, who is Responsible (does the work), Accountable (owns the outcome — exactly one person), Consulted (gives input), and Informed (kept in the loop). The Commons Library’s organising modules treat the RACI as the tool that kills the I thought you were doing that ambiguity in coalitions [source: commons-library]. The single-A discipline is the entire point of the matrix.

What are the four roles?

The four letters name distinct relationships to the task. Responsible does the work, with multiple R’s allowed per row. Accountable owns the outcome, with exactly one A per row — because more than one A means no one is truly accountable, and zero A’s means no one owns the outcome. Consulted gives input before the work or decision. Informed is kept in the loop after [source: commons-library]. Each cell of the matrix is exactly one of the four letters.

When should a campaign build a new RACI?

A campaign should build a new RACI per recurring decision type — public statements, budget reallocations, escalation steps, responses to opposition moves — rather than one giant RACI for the whole campaign. The Commons Library recommends rebuilding the RACI when a lead changes, not when someone has to ask who’s doing this? [source: commons-library]. The matrix is a living document, reviewed at personnel changes rather than frozen at kick-off.

What is a common failure mode with RACI?

A common failure mode is treating the RACI as a one-shot exercise produced at kick-off and never revised. The Commons Library warns that a RACI that goes out of date is worse than no RACI, because the team acts on it as if it were current [source: commons-library]. The discipline is to rebuild the matrix when ownership actually changes, not as a quarterly ritual divorced from real team turnover.

Sources & verification

Last verified: 2026-06-23