Effective Convening Tools Will Help you:
- Develop an Effective Backbone Organization
- Develop Effective Leaders
- Create an Inclusive Setting
- Build Capacity for Shared Leadership
- Assess and Strengthen Initiative Communication Practices
- Embed Effective Communication within Meeting Processes
Shared Vision and Goals Tools Will Help You:
- Design and Launch a Shared Visioning Process
- Embed Equity into the Shared Visioning Process
- Talk with Others about the Shared Vision
- Develop Skills to Talk About Equity
- Help Organizations Explore Opportunities to Embed Vision
- Build Awareness and A Call to Action
Engaged Diverse Partners Tools Will Help You:
- Identify and Recruit Diverse Partners
- Create Opportunities for Active Engagement
- Develop a Clear Action Plan
- Coordinate Multiple Efforts
- Support Initiative Members in Taking Leadership Roles
- Support Community Leadership Development
- Provide Change Agent Opportunities
Aligned Systems Tools Will Help You:
- Design a System Scan
- Gather Information from Diverse Perspectives and Sources
- Make Sense of System Scan Information
- Develop a Shared Agenda
- Design Powerful Strategies to Purse Shared Vision
- Initiate Action
- Support Effective Implementation
- Pursue Sustainable Funding Sources
Adaptive Learning and Improvement Processes Tools Will Help You:
- Define and Measure Shared Outcomes
- Gather Rapid Feedback on Change Efforts
- Respond to Emerging Needs and Opportunities
- Support Organizational Learning and Improvement
- Promote New Expectations and Incentives
Equity Pursuits Tools Will Help You:
Tools for Action
How do you build an equitable, healthy community?
A community transformation process is guided by four critical, developmental stages and elements: Organize for Action, Create Action & Impact, Embed Practices, and Sustain Value, Processes, & Outcomes. The ability for transformative community change to take place builds as opportunities grow from community members developing tools through each progressive stage. As community collaborative efforts move from stage to stage, recognizing the role and objectives of each as individually important, yet systematically linked, can assist in growing the transformative change process in any community. 
Organize for Action
Organize for Action initiates the community capacity to organize around prioritized community health needs, seek out a neutral and trusted convener, and gather diverse members and resources to build a strong foundation for community change.
Create Action & Impact
Growing from this organization of resources and ideas, the Create Action & Impact stage strengthens the change process by establishing an inclusive and goal oriented culture to identify coordinated actions to undertake in different areas of the community.
Embed Practices
In order for these actions to take place, the Embed Practices change stage moves the discussed actions out into the wider community by distributing action leaders in community organizations and maintaining a constant flow of communication between the multiple stakeholders involved.
Sustain Value, Processes, & Outcomes
Importantly, the last stage of Sustain Value, Processes, & Outcomes, solidifies the opportunities for engagement with community members to allow for a collective and empowered vision to grow public will, funding, and mechanisms towards continuous improvement.
After an extensive review of the literature on collaborative community change efforts, the System exChange at Michigan State University identified the following 6 critical elements that promote transformative community change:
- Effective Convening
- Shared Vision and Goals
- Engaged Diverse Partners
- Aligned Systems
- Adaptive Learning and Improvement Processes
- Equity Pursuits
Click on the links above to find descriptions of each of these 6 elements as well as tools and resources for moving to action. These resources are available to support your systems change and community transformation process. As guides and tools, they are to help you get started and stay motivated on your systems change and community transformation journey.
Check out these printable resources
Source: ABLe Change
-
Change Agent Field Guide. Practical tools and ideas for how organizations and groups can bring systems change practices into their work
-
BBO Field Guide. Step by step processes, tools, and examples for backbone organizations supporting local collaboratives in pursuit of collective impact outcomes.
- ABLe Pocket Guide. High-level summary of the 8 step ABLe Change process for community systems change.