Comprehensive Community Initiatives Forum on Resident Engagement

The Gathering

“I just want to talk to somebody. I need some therapy. Talk back at me and help me do this better.”– A foundation leader with many years of experience in community work, describing why he came to the Comprehensive Community Initiatives (CCI) Forum in Kansas City.

More than 50 residents, practitioners and foundation staff from all over the country gathered at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation last summer to share their diverse experiences with comprehensive community initiatives.

Some participants, such as those from the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, had many years of experience working through the multiple challenges of long-term community building. Others, such as the Fannie Mae Foundation, were still in the planning stages. Everyone came with questions, issues and challenges that they hoped others could help them tackle. They also came with hard-won knowledge gained from months and years of working on the complex community issues CCIs are designed to address. The assembled group included people with so much wisdom and experience in community change work that one of the younger participants whispered to another, “Meeting everyone here is like meeting folklore.”

The Forum began with explorations about common values and principles so that the experiences – both good and bad — could be shared more easily during the meeting. Participants expressed their deep commitments to their communities and families, to their lifelong work and, most of all, to learning from others how to do their own work better.

The ground rules for the meeting supported the values that the group expressed:
• Mutual respect. Treat others as you would like to be treated.
• Active participation. Every experience is valuable to the learning of the whole group.
• Self-responsibility. Anything that needs to be said should be said in the room, not in the parking lot after the meeting.

What is Resident Engagement, Anyway?

Defining resident engagement proved to be a challenge. Virtually all of the teams defined their resident engagement strategies differently. Most foundations started with a place-based strategy, geographically defining a neighborhood or set of contiguous neighborhoods as the focus of their work. Residents within the defined neighborhoods were invited to provide input into initiatives in ways that ranged from suggesting how the foundation’s project should be framed to participating in advisory roles once the initiative got started. Some foundations funded intermediary organizations or consultants who in turn recruited residents. Two or three initiatives preferred the term “citizen” engagement and worked to involve many people in the larger community. One initiative started with organizing church congregations to work together across racial and class boundaries; another started with rapidly changing neighborhoods that had few established leaders or patterns of interaction.

Even though the terminology distinctions were important in understanding each initiative, participants agreed that the essence of resident engagement was the extent to which residents had power to influence decisions. Or, as one participant asked, “Is the community involved in the funder’s game or in their own game?” Participants in long-time initiatives with quantifiable achievements were quick to point out that, in the long run, it has to be the community’s game for any gains to be sustained. Questions about who qualified as a “resident” were part of every initiative’s struggle at some point, since neighborhood businesses, organizations and people who worked in the neighborhood were also part of the decision-making process. Participants agreed that business owners, service providers, churches, schools and others have a stake in what happens, but it is not the same stake as the people who live there. One participant summed up the distinctions succinctly: “Residents reside; stakeholders participate. But residents are the ones who have to live with the decisions.” Clarifying who plays what role in decisions – and at what point – was a key turning point toward success in every project. The balancing act for funders is to be a strong partner, offering tools and resources that are necessary to move the work forward but fully respecting residents’ rights to question, disagree or reshape ideas without jeopardizing the partnership.

The importance of relationships surfaced again as participants talked about the developmental path that successful initiatives have taken to achieve a workable balance of power. The first stage is building trust, beginning with early wins. The second stage is developing a common vision — an acknowledgement that the group wants to move in the same direction. Implementation comes next, with the need to draw the circle wider, include more people and garner more and different resources. Each stage requires new relationships, working out conflicts among partners and continually establishing trust and vision. Several participants gave examples of how early conflict among partners was worked through in positive, empowering ways and led to long-term relationships. The key was the commitment to stay at the table through the stormy times.

What Have We Learned?

One participant captured the atmosphere of learning at the Forum this way: “This work requires different skills than anything we’ve done in the past, and an attitude that no one has all the answers.” Even though no one pretended to have all the answers, the experiences shared led to some common lessons.

It takes more time and commitment to do this right than anyone ever imagines. Undertaking a comprehensive community initiative is not for the faint of heart. Each one plays out in more complicated ways than even the best planners can anticipate. All the teams at the Forum had many stories to share about false starts, leadership changes, political issues, funding crises and other obstacles. Building the necessary relationships and capacities and circling back to include more partners at every stage of development add to the time required to produce tangible results. In the end, the work will never be completely done to everyone’s satisfaction, so celebrating key successes along the way and acknowledging the many small steps toward the bigger goal are critically important to keeping the momentum going.

The issues of race, class and power permeate every aspect of community work. They need to be addressed respectfully and persistently. Differences of race and class played out at every level: in relationships between foundations and neighborhoods, in relationships among neighbors, in leadership roles and in political power within cities. Ignoring these realities makes partnership building much more difficult, and finding ways to build the trust required to deal with them remains a challenge for everyone doing this work.

Much of the conversation at the Forum came back to issues of power, no matter where the conversation started. Taking the time required for relationship building, intentionally learning to trust one another and addressing the power issues head on from the beginning seemed to help the most. Teams at the Forum with long-standing partnerships demonstrated for others how relationships can be worked out over time, with foundation partners modeling what many participants expressed. Those with power have to give permission for those without power to take it. Those who were without power have to learn to assume it and use it effectively.

All the key partners have to change their old ways of thinking and working to achieve success.
Foundation staff learned a lot about their own work from their experiences creating new kinds of partnerships with residents – and recognized how it needed to change. Giving up the power to make decisions has been the biggest challenge for funders accustomed to shaping initiatives and grants around very specific purposes. Some staff realized that their preparation and staffing was initially inadequate to support the level of involvement they needed to have. Others realized that the time frames, budget cycles, evaluation measures and administrative rules of their organizations didn’t match up with how their initiatives played out.

Like their foundation partners, residents had plenty to say about changes that are required of them for initiatives to be successful. Residents have to overcome very legitimate fears, suspicion and lack of trust that years of dashed hopes have generated in their communities. Leaders need to learn to step forward and move ahead without waiting for someone else to do it. They have to be willing to help outsiders see the reality of their communities and work with them to bring in outside resources to help them solve problems. They also have to organize themselves to push back when necessary and not to depend on foundations for long- term support.

Using local organizations as intermediaries between foundations and residents had mixed reviews among Forum participants. Some teams found that local organizations that have historically represented residents may not really represent the changing demographics or current politics of the neighborhood. Others found that legitimate organizational agendas were sometimes at odds with the collaboration that foundations intended to develop. Resolving the difficulties among organizations in one consortium took so much time that resident participation was never fully achieved. In one city, a powerful force against change was a network of “elders” in the community who were reluctant to allow younger, more diverse leaders to emerge and change things. The bottom line was that local organizations, like residents and foundations, need to share power, include others and find creative ways to work together.

Planning for sustainability has to start before the beginning. “Sustainability of what?” is a good question to ask, as the Forum conversations showed. Sustaining resident interest and participation in community change after initial funding is over is one kind of goal;. sustaining momentum for comprehensive community change over many years is something else. Forum participants agreed that both kinds of sustainability are important and that planning for the future has to start at the same time the initiative starts. Learning opportunities that focus on building knowledge and skill for leadership and organizing among neighborhood residents is essential. Strategic planning, financing strategies and partnership building with local leaders in business, government and philanthropy are likewise essential for long-term impact.

Continuous Learning: Where Do We Go From Here?

By the Forum’s final session, deeper analysis of the lessons learned and the implications of current knowledge for future work was just getting started. Discussion turned to sustainability challenges and suggestions for future learning opportunities. Some suggested that more youth and more elected officials need to participate. Others added that there needs to be a focus on results, more in-depth discussion of specific strategies for tackling tough issues and sustaining the promising efforts that have begun, as well as more integration of technology into the work. The group identified two important next steps: (1) Develop an ongoing learning network among cities and neighborhoods engaged in community change, and (2) Develop user-friendly communication vehicles that would enable people across the country to continue to share what they are learning.

As the meeting ended, participants lingered on with colleagues from other places, eager to learn everything they could in the short time remaining. The end circled back to the beginning. It is all about relationships, connecting with others who share the same values and gaining support to keep pushing forward in this demanding, frustrating, necessary and rewarding work.

Forum participants included:
• Residents from Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Del Ray Beach, East Palo Alto, Kansas City, Oakland, Philadelphia and San Jose
• Funder teams from Annie E. Casey, Empower Baltimore Management Corporation, Fannie Mae, Greater Cincinnati Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
• Foundation representatives from F.B. Heron Foundation, Peninsula Community Foundation, Community Foundation of Silicon Valley and Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation

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