Sharing Power and
Engaging Communities
The people closest to the issues know best the solutions, but for many nonprofits and grantmakers, when it comes to authentically centering community perspectives in the work, often there is a gap between intention and action. Building trusting relationships and changing internal processes and practices can feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to be.
Why Sharing Power Matters
With over 25 years of experience in deep partnership with nonprofits and foundations, we at Community Wealth Partners have cultivated and refined our approach to centering community in everything we do. We have developed tools and frameworks to guide our work with nonprofits and foundations. Now we are sharing them with you.
The Sharing Power with Community Toolkit offers tools and practical guidance to help nonprofits and grantmakers take the next step in centering the people closest to the issues in their work.
Navigating the Page
This page features learning tools for two separate paths which include Starting Out / Making the Case and Ready to Launch. The learning paths were carefully designed to address common questions, and tension points nonprofit sand foundations experience at the various stages of sharing power with communities. Before you select your path and start downloading materials, we encourage you to review and reflect on the questions we outlined under Step 1. Stopping here first, will help you determine what will be most beneficial to your team and community.
Step 1
Identify Your Learning Path
Step 2
Download Resources
Step 3
Continue Learning
Step 1:
Questions to reflect on prior to downloading resources with your teamsand independent thinking.
- 1. Are you clear on what decisions community members will make and what is off the table? Do you know how the input you receive will be used?
- 2. Do you have buy-in from your organizational leaders and staff who will need to act on community feedback?
- 3. Do you have an initial idea of how you would engage people (e.g., advisory committee, participatory design process etc)?
If you answered no to one or more of these questions, we encourage you to start
with resources outlined under Starting Out and Making the Case before you moveto Ready to Launch and Troubleshooting.
Step 2:
Identify and download materials best for you
Starting Out/Making the Case
Starting Out/Making the Case
For organizations that want to understand different models of community engagement, think about how they could be applied to their organization, and work on ways to make the case within their organization for greater community engagement.
Additional reflection questions for individuals and teams:
1. WHY are you engaging and sharing power with the community?
2. WHAT are the key questions to answer as you explore making community power sharing happen inan organization or community?
Ready to Launch (or Launching and Troubleshooting)
Ready to Launch (or Launching and Troubleshooting)
For organizations whose staff and leaders are aligned around the importance
of community engagement but want to develop a plan to execute on it. What should it look like? How do we do outreach? How do we compensate etc.
Additional reflection questions for individuals and teams:
1. HOW do we do community power sharing in practice / what are the initial steps?
2. What are the common pitfalls to avoid?
Step 3:
Continue Learning About Sharing Power
Sharing power with communities is a ever evolving process that includes wins and missteps along the way. You can change the conditions that led to your missteps, repair harm you caused, and rebuild trust through the process of repair.
Our resource library below features learnings and best practices from our work including links to folks we continue to learn from in the field. Feel free to pair these resources with tools you gathered from the learning paths above.
Resource Library Links
You will be prompted to enter your contact information, and then you will be given direct links to the resources.