Engaged Diverse Partners

Effective change efforts engage a diverse range of cross-sector partners around shared goals. This type of engagement strengthens connections across historically fragmented health and social systems and creates a setting for partners to pursue strategies for building healthier, more equitable communities (Siegel 2018).
 

Diverse members of the collaborative effort represent a range of perspectives across:

• sectors (health, social service, housing, education, employment, transportation, etc.)
• roles (leaders, staff, community leaders, residents experiencing targeted problems and inequities)
• demographics (e.g., gender, age, educational level, and ethnic or racial backgrounds)

These members are actively engaged in the change effort, meaning they regularly attend workgroup, committee, and/or action team meetings and fully participate in discussions (Foster-Fishman et al., 2001). This allows members to develop trust in each other and believe they can collectively achieve their goals. (Hargreaves, 2017). Active engagement also allows the collaborative effort to tap into diverse members’ skills, resources, and networks to promote local change (Foster-Fishman et al., 2001).

Tools to Engage Diverse, Active, and Able Partners

Identify and Recruit Diverse Partners  

Identify and recruit local community perspectives (e.g., youth and adult residents, leaders, organization staff, community leaders, etc.) who should be engaged to help your initiative pursue the shared vision goals. Use the following tools to help identify a range of different potential perspective groups to engage, and effectively recruit them to your efforts. 

Identifying Relevant Perspectives
Tool to help identify which stakeholders still need to be engaged to pursue your Shared Vision.
Source: ABLe Change

Understanding Culture, Social Organization, and Leadership to Enhance Engagement 
Resources for support of the engagement of residents from diverse cultural backgrounds. 
Source: Community Tool Box 

Involving People Most Affected by the Problem   
Tips and resources for how to meaningfully engage community residents directly experiencing targeted problems or inequities. 
Source: Community Tool Box 

Involving Key Influentials in the Initiative 
Tips and resources for how to recruit and engage influential stakeholders in the community to support your change initiative. 
Source: Community Tool Box 

Including Youth on Your Board, Commission, or Committee 
Tips and resources for how to recruit and engage youth as active members within your collaborative change initiative. 
Source: Community Tool Box 

Developing a Plan for Increasing Participation in Community Action 
Tips and resources on how to recruit diverse stakeholders into your change initiative. 
Source: Community Tool Box 

Recognizing Allies 
Tips and resources to successfully engage people and groups who share your organization’s mission and goals to support your change efforts. 
Source: Community Tool Box 

Create opportunities for active engagement 

Once you have recruited diverse community partners to join your change efforts, create multiple opportunities for them to actively and authentically engage in the initiative. Use the following resources to help design these opportunities within your initiative. 

Promoting Participation Among Diverse Groups 
Tips and resources for engaging diverse members within your change efforts. 
Source: Community Tool Box 

Multicultural Collaboration 
Resources and recommendations for how to effectively engage diverse partners in collaborative change efforts. 
Source: Community Tool Box 

Developing Multi-sector Collaborations 
Tips and resources for engaging stakeholders from multiple sectors to collaboratively solve systemic problems. 
Source: Community Tool Box 

Initiatives can also create opportunities for active engagement by organizing diverse members into affinity groups. Affinity groups bring together individuals from the same system role (e.g., leader, staff, consumer) to problem-solve and take action around the shared vision. This type of infrastructure promotes active engagement by creating safe spaces for dialogue and the inclusion of diverse perspectives (Burns, 2007).  

The following resources can help in creating affinity groups within your initiative. 

Designing a Systemic Action Learning Infrastructure Guide 
Key processes for designing an initiative or meeting infrastructure to promote active engagement across diverse stakeholders. 
Source: ABLe Change 

Building Teams: Broadening the Base for Leadership  
Tips and resources on how to help partners within your initiative effectively work together and share leadership roles. 
Source: Community Tool Box 

Once engaged, effective change efforts also ensure members have clear and coordinated roles to promote the work. This involves providing clear direction (e.g., through an action plan) so members understand their roles and responsibilities to support the local change efforts (Foster-Fishman et al., 2009).
 

Similarly, effective initiatives help members coordinate their efforts with each other - as well as with other local organizations and change efforts - to better leverage resources and outcomes (Calancie, 2017).

Tools to Develop Clear and Coordinated Roles

Develop a Clear Action Plan 

One effective way to help partners clarify their roles within the initiative is to develop an action plan. This plan should be organized around the key outcomes within the shared vision, and include enough detail so partners can effectively take action. Use the following resources to develop a clear action plan for your initiative.

Action Plan Template
Tool to summarize outcomes, strategies, and specific activities related to your shared vision and help stakeholders understand what roles they can take to support the effort.
Source: ABLe Change

Developing Strategy Activities
Guide to develop activities stakeholders can pursue to carry out strategies. Helps in filling out the action plan template above.
Source: ABLe Change

Community Action Guide: Framework for Addressing Community Goals and Problems
Tips and recommendations for how to develop clear action plans to promote shared goals.
Source: Community Tool Box

Coordinate Multiple Efforts 

As your initiative begins to pursue multiple activities related to the shared vision, it is important to coordinate these change efforts to ensure they are aligned.  

One way to accomplish this is to carefully track all of the actions affinity groups, organizations, and partner initiatives are initiating to identify opportunities for synergy and prevent unintentional interference across actions. The following resources can help your initiative develop this type of action tracking system. 

Systems Change Action Record Template 
Tool to document actions and outcomes emerging from initiated systems change strategies; use to promote shared accountability. 
Source: ABLe Change Example Systems Change Action Record  
Sample action record tool with example actions and outcomes emerging from initiated systems change strategies. 
Source: ABLe Change 

Another way is for the initiative to intentionally “weave” critical information between groups to aid their problem-solving and action. For example, Backbone Organization staff can keep track of what is being learned about local conditions and proposed actions during initiative meetings. The Backbone staff can then share relevant information with other individuals, organizations, or groups in or outside the initiative to coordinate collective problem-solving and action around shared goals. 

Use the following resources to explore how your initiative could use weaving to help coordinate local change efforts around the shared vision. 

Weaving Cheat Sheet 
Facilitation tool to help integrate information and learning across groups both within and outside your initiative to promote a more cohesive change effort. 
Source: ABLe Change 

Through their active engagement, members of effective change efforts willingly take on leadership roles as they arise (Smith et al., 2004). This willingness is supported when leaders of the change effort are able to effectively convene partners and share power.
 

Members not only take on leadership roles within the collaborative initiative, but they also actively lead changes within their own organization or community that support the shared vision/goals. These aligned actions create ripple effects of change into the community which can help trigger larger systems changes related to the shared vision (Trickett & Beehler, 2017).

Tools to Ensure Distributed Leadership

Support Initiative Members in Taking Leadership Roles 

Intentionally support and encourage members of your initiative in taking on leadership roles to support the shared vision goals - within the initiative, their organizations, and in the community.  

There are many ways initiatives can provide this support and encouragement. For example, initiatives can engage respected members to champion leadership opportunities, launch a community of practice groups for members to engage in peer to peer learning and mutual accountability, and/or recognize and celebrate members who are taking on leadership roles. 

Use the following resources to plan out how to support members of your initiative in taking on leadership roles to support the change efforts. 

Developing a Plan for Building Leadership 
Guide for building strong leaders within your collaborative initiative or organization.  
Source: Community Tool Box 

To promote sustainability, effective initiatives ultimately work to engage and mobilize residents experiencing targeted problems and inequities as change agents (Foster-Fishman & Watson, in press). This includes creating settings and processes for residents to influence local decision-making and supporting them in taking action to promote health equity within their own lives and in the community (Foster-Fishman et. al., 2009).

Empowered constituencies not only help to initiate changes across the community (Foster-Fishman & Watson, in press), but they are more likely to demand transparency and hold the coalition and organizations accountable (Taylor, 2018).

Tools to Support Empowered Residents

Support Community Leadership Development 

One way initiatives can help residents take on change agent roles is to provide and/or support local resident leadership development efforts within the community. Use the following resources to explore how your initiative could help support resident leadership development in your region. 

The Changemaker's Guide
Resources for residents to meaningfully engage with the policy and planning processes shaping their neighborhoods.  
Source: Change Lab Solutions

Learning How to Be a Community Leader
Guide to help residents pursue empowered leadership roles within their community.
Source: Community Tool Box

Kitchen Table Democracy
Videos, tools and resources related to civic and community engagement.
Source: Kitchen Table

Provide Change Agent Opportunities 

Initiatives can also create opportunities for residents to take on change agent roles as part of the initiative’s efforts.  The following resources can help with exploring these opportunities.

ABLe Photovoice Guide
Bring photovoice to your community engagement effort using this easy to use guide.
Source: ABLe Change

Recruiting for a Resident Action Team
How to develop and recruit for a resident action team to help pursue your Shared Vision.
Source: ABLe Change