Community Agreements Tool
Facilitators use community agreements exercises to establish rules about how a group will talk and listen to one another. Community agreements are a great idea, but our typical approaches don't allow us to leverage their full potential for transforming people and systems. Here's the tool I use to get participants thinking deeply about what it means to work supportively together within institutionalized systems of oppression.
Program Design and Travel Equity Tool
As program developers, when we make decisions that include participant travel in our meeting and conference designs, we usually have the project budget in mind. Yet there are equity consequences to those decisions. This tool is designed to help us make equitable decisions for individuals, organizations, and our planet when we are designing nonprofit programs that could include travel components for participants.
Civic Engagement Strategies for Building Healthy Communities
As we grow the number of advocacy organizations in communities, we risk misusing our energy by duplicating one another's work and leaving important gaps for civic engagement organizing and training left open. I rely on this basic deck to work with coalitions who want to make sure they are covering the complete trajectory to build political power in their communities.
Boards and Commissions Leadership for Local and Regional Advocacy
The entry point for training under-represented leaders from low-income communities and communities of color is getting clear on the strategies and theories associated in such service. I often build from this base deck when I serve as a guest at community organization's training programs.
Political and Technical Assistance Planning
It's usually more than one organization can handle to fully cover all of the needs of a public commissions training program – and even if it is possible, it's not necessarily the smartest way forward. I use this worksheet to consider networked technical assistance for pre-pilot and piloting boards and commissions training programs.
Appointed Commission Service and Your Political Trajectory
Can public boards and commissions service support positive outcomes for future elected leaders from under-represented communities? Here's the base deck I use when speaking on that topic through webinars and conference presentations.
Supporting Boards and Commissions in Getting Seated
I often say that the training component of building a public commissions training program is just one small sliver of a very large pie. A much bigger piece of that pie is getting your folks seated. In this guide, I gather some best practices for supporting your participants as they make their applications to public commissions service.
Measuring Impact in Commissions Training Programs
Training your community leaders for commission service and getting them appointed is one thing, but how do you figure out if all of your hard work is paying off? Here is the worksheet that I use to walk through program evaluation with pre-pilot and piloting boards and commissions training programs.