The Learning Community: Driving change through community power building
Photo from the 2023 Spring All-Partner Convening
COO drives change through investing in models, infrastructure and connections that build community power. Via the Learning Community Strategy, COO supports community organizations’ infrastructure, sustained capacity, and connections to operationalize equity.
The COO Evaluation Report (disponible también en español), found that from 2015 to 2021 COO supported partners to strengthen existing power in communities.
Mostly through the Learning Community, COO provided opportunities for partners and all community-based agencies in King County working towards racial and social justice to expand their capacity and community connections to build power. The Learning Strategy also supported testing transformative models to catalyze and accelerate our collective momentum toward equity. The Learning Community provided shared learning opportunities aimed at increasing not just skills and knowledge but also relationships and collaboration opportunities of community-based organizations.
What does COO understand about community power?
Community power is the ability of communities most impacted by inequities to come together to plan and work on a course of action, shift public discourse, increase opportunities for community ownership, and ultimately, advance change. Community power-building approaches seek to strengthen existing power in the communities that have been historically and systematically disempowered, increasing their capacity to shift power dynamics broadly in ways that increase equity.
The Learning Community leveraged resources and works in collaboration with institutional and community partners who are committed to racial equity and community-led solutions that further solidarity, leadership, self-determination, and community power.
“How have we built power? Well, we’ve built power by organizing ourselves better…. We’ve made a move organizationally to focus on community organizing as the mission and vision of the [organization]. That’s no small thing. Though the impact is that we’re now built for sustainable change. That’s internal. We’ve changed our practices, the way we meet, our staff is now majority people of color… ”
Community power-building can support policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) changes that advance equity.
The evaluation of COO activities from 2015 - 2021 demonstrated how COO’s focus on building community power has supported sustainable PSE changes that advance equity. Partners found COO’s multi-year funding helpful in building this power as it allowed partners to hire staff and was flexible enough to cover administrative costs and community power building activities. To build and strengthen their existing power, COO partners through the Learning Community engaged in activities such as solidifying community connections, developing community leaders, and community organizing.
Community organizing
As several COO partners explained during the evaluation, activities that help build connections and support community organizing are rarely funded outside of COO. Some of the ways that COO has reinforced partners to engage in community organizing include:
Bringing community members together to identify and build strategies to address a specific issue
Supporting community members and organizations to implement these strategies
Funding community organizer positions and the time needed for community organizing
Providing trainings and resources to help organizations to community organize
Collecting, analyzing and sharing data and stories, and providing training on using data and stories
How community organizing has helped move towards PSE change:
Many partners identified issues and developed strategies to address collectively. They hosted events that strengthened critical connections and expanded the community’s ability to collaborate and connect with decision-makers. COO allowed for greater community involvement which can increase opportunities to develop community leaders and build sustainability because more people are engaged to do the work. Strengthening community power can also begin to correct for the way that many COO communities have been disempowered and their demands systematically ignored, potentially contributing to the very structural inequities they aim to address.
See some examples of resources and tools in support of organizational capacity, including:
Toolkits – Community Collaboration, HR & Equity, Alternative Leadership models, Fiscal sponsorship, and more!
Coaching & Workshops – community development, asset management, financial management, organizational leadership, solidarity economy, communications and digital tools, fundraising and campaigns, data & evaluation, and many more!
Developing community leaders
COO’s efforts to build and nourish connections among community leaders created overlap them and subsequent equity-focused initiatives and programs in the region. The flexibility of COO’s funding gave the opportunity to community leaders to meet and to sit at decision-making tables. Several community leaders who have participated in COO have become members on non-profit boards, taskforces, and advisory groups; provided public testimony during hearings; and become candidates for elected office; and more. For example, in 2021, a community member from Comunidad Latina de Vashon was appointed to the Vashon School Board, increasing opportunities for Latinx perspectives to shape school decisions. In another example, an affiliated community member from the Muslim Community & Neighborhood Association was appointed to Kirkland’s Human Services Commission.
Since 2018, COO partners have developed or strengthened 2,095 community leaders. Some leadership development efforts that COO has supported include:
Providing trainings and opportunities to lead programs
Hiring community members to lead initiatives and projects
Funding community organizer and trainer positions and the time for leadership development efforts
How leadership development helps move towards PSE change:
Leadership development can support significant steps towards PSE change. It can increase the sustainability of an initiative because more people can lead the work. It can also increase the likelihood that the effort is community-driven, in turn building community power.
“We’ve been able to build up leadership with those who are on the front lines of doing the work in our community, who are trusted.”
Read about some of the new models and systems change activities supported by COO:
The co-design process for the GROUNDED in Youth Speaker Series event had a positive impact on shifting the approach to promoting youth leadership. The co-design helped provide affirmation of the need to listen to youth about their priorities and putting resources behind it.
One-on-one coaching (such as financial coaching) support provided tools, financial planning, and communication strategies to help leaders feel more confident in their knowledge and skills to be able to step up into leadership roles.
BIPOC Entrepreneur Fellowship Program. Front and Centered, in partnership with the People’s Economy Lab, launched the New Frontline Community Fellowship program to support and amplify BIPOC entrepreneurs who are using transformative approaches to achieve a community-centered economy. The program provides capital and a community of support to entrepreneurs leading work in a wide range of sectors and communities
Strengthening community connections
Community connections are a central component of community power. Stronger and more expansive networks can improve the capacity to produce change. Building community connections strengthen the foundation from which partners and communities could address the power imbalances that undergird structural inequities. Since 2018, COO partners developed 451 new partnerships and 1,119 new relationships. There have been many opportunities in which COO’s Learning Community has built and increased community connections:
Hosting community and cultural events and meeting spaces
Holding planning and strategy meetings, learning circles, peer-learning cohorts
Holding civic engagement events like voter outreach and volunteer recruitment
Convenings with community, philanthropic, and governmental agencies
How building community connections helps move towards PSE change:
Building and strengthening community connections increases the base of people to organize and mobilize, the networks through which to find collaborators, and the potential connections to decision-makers, funders, and other people in positions of power. Stronger relationships can make organizing and collaborating easier. Since 2019, the Learning Community provided 63 capacity and relationship-building opportunities attended by 2,393 people. COO partners reported a total of 451 new partners (formal relationships), and 1,118 new informal relationships since 2018. In total, COO community partners held over 9,191 community and capacity building events. Examples of these spaces for community connection and sharing learning that COO hosted or supported since 2015 through the Learning Community strategy include:
Meeting the Moment online convening and workshops
COO Learning Community Speaker Series: Grounded in Community & Cultivating Community
Moving in Solidarity youth coalition convenings in partnership with the Best Starts for Kids Healthy & Safe Environments (HSE) strategy - Watch the coalition's What's Cookin? Event video
All-Partner Convenings - Watch the Spring Convening and register for the Winter Convening on December 14th
The 2015-2021 evaluation identified some opportunities for the Learning Community. Based on feedback from COO participants, the Learning Community could create more connection building spaces, as well as support partners to navigate conflict and changes in relationship dynamics within partnerships. As a result, the COO team in collaboration with community partners, is continuing and seeking to expand Learning Community offerings in partnership with other aligned groups, both internal to COO and King County and with community and institutional partners. The success of the Learning Community model is an opportunity to help other initiatives use a similar strategy to support partners beyond financial resources and strengthen existing power in communities.
“We recognize that our vision may take many years. It requires growing and sustaining community power to overcome barriers. By building on our strengths, organizing community, and using our collective power to change policy and systems we can ensure our communities, businesses, centers of faith, and cultural institutions and organizations will thrive in place…”
Download the 2015 – 2021 Evaluation Report
Descargue el Informe de Evaluación 2015 – 2021 de COO