Resources

The Communities of Opportunity (COO) Learning Community (LC) & alterNative invites you to participate in a learning circle series designed to help community leaders, staff, and board members learn how to strategically and intentionally leverage governance and leadership to transform how power flows, how systems are structured, and how culture is felt at the organizations. 

Capacity building support is available to COO & Best Starts for Kids contracted/funded organizations - AND - support is available via the COO Learning Community for groups working in alignment with COO’s mission, vision and values who are not currently funded.

Have a question about financial planning, management, or reporting? Contact Coach Amy through the financial coaching hotline!

COO hosted a series of two workshops to learn tools and practices around financial planning and sustainability. These workshops offered case studies on how organizations are using financial information and long-range planning to make strategic decisions about their visionary work, and offered tools and strategies to create financially sustainable and health organizations.

This workshop focuses on basic fundamentals of what fiscal sponsorship is - including a particular focus on exploring how to best support youth-led groups who are interested in being fiscally sponsored and working with youth-driven projects.This panel included, youth and community leaders who have had successful experiences as a fiscal sponsor and/or as a fiscally sponsored group and what contributed to a healthy relationship.

COO Learning Community strategy partnered with Communities Count to bring workshops and capacity building resources on data and evaluation to community partners.

New Toolkits & Capacity Building resources for community organizations — learn more about supports available through the COO Learning Community

Financial Oversight is an important part of leading an organization – we need good financial information and tools to make sound strategic decisions about our work. In this workshop, Amy Michael and Sarah Tran discuss how organization leaders approach financial oversight. They share some tools and practices you can use at your own organization to check in on your own financial oversight. Recorded March 8, 2022

In this workshop trainers do a deep dive into capital campaign readiness and the importance of organizational capacity for effective capital campaign fundraising. Regardless of where you are on your campaign journey, if you know a capital campaign is on the horizon, taking steps now to build out your fundraising capacity is critical to your organization’s long-term success.

This workshop provides a high-level overview of capital campaign fundraising concepts and terms including campaign feasibility study, prospect research, gift pyramids, and other fundraising activities within the context of a capital campaign. Also included is a review typical capital campaign timelines and using a community-centric fundraising lens, an exploration of fundraising strategies that can leverage broader support for an organization’s vision and mission by centering on a shared vision for the future.

Resources and tips to support inclusive and equitable online meetings and online meeting facilitation.

This virtual showcase highlighted the work of five rooted community groups who worked to uplift the experiences of communities most impacted by COVID-19 and the culmination of their community-led data collection and storytelling projects conducted over 2021.

Workshop description: Illuminate what to consider when your communication starts local and then is shared more broadly. How does the strategy and tools change? What are the major thresholds, advantages, and challenges for different scales of audiences? Workshop focuses on scales of neighborhood, city, and county. Watch the recording here.

Learn more about crafting effective messages and getting audiences with local government to meet your goals. Build relationships and reputations that facilitate generative partnerships and ways to influence public leadership and represent your community.

COVID-19 has redefined nearly every process and task. This workshop will look at the digital tools for communicating at various levels (team members, clients, community members, funders) that can keep us socially connected while physically distant. These tools can be power campaigns even without pandemic restrictions.

Explore steps that align storytelling and policy change. We follow a process from idea to advancing community-centered solutions through formal policy change. How to translate culturally specific perspectives for white audiences, while staying authentic to our own communities and cultures.

Reflections from the December All-Partner Convening - a day devoted to connection, learning, sharing, and restoration.

Communities of Opportunity (COO) is excited to share some of the highlights from the COO All-Partner Convening held on May 10, 2023 with Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer. This event brought together individuals and organizations driven by a shared commitment to equity, justice, collaboration and positive change.

The Tesfa Program developed this web-based toolkit to increase the capacity of providers, organizations, and decision-makers to better connect and serve local Ethiopian communities. Check out the toolkit, accompanying podcast and ways to get involved here!

This conversation with youth leaders and staff from Young Women Empowered (Y-WE) explored how to create supportive and healthy spaces for youth leadership and development — and youth ownership of transformative organizing work.

The first two sessions from the GROUNDED 2022 Speaker Series are now available for viewing! Learn how local organizations and faith communities are responding to community needs and priorities in a time of global pandemic and displacement.

Videos and recap from COO’s September 2021 Meeting the Moment gathering, Community Conversations on Healing, Advocacy and Building the Future We Want.

Recapping the Cultivating Community Transformation discussion and reflections on the journey of COO — the difficulties of shifting systems and institutions to enter into more relational and authentic conversations with community, the early intentions of COO coalesce around shared values, listen to the leadership within communities, and the work to invest in and strengthen community partnerships that can inform and bring momentum to the policy and systems changes needed for a more equitable King County.

Join COO's "Cultivating Community" 6 part series, designed to amplify and learn from the efforts of our community driven partnerships.

So, what does it take to create an economy that truly serves people? To create the economy we all deserve? Join the COO Learning Community & People’s Economy Lab (PEL) in the 2026 Economics for Emancipation King County learning series will answer this question and more, and prepare participants to take action on what they learn.

In this second part of the Commercial Affordability Summit recap, read about other current programs and models of commercial affordability and access to capital and support for small business and entrepreneurs: from those led by the City of Seattle such as Restored; to some of the most community rooted examples of commercial affordability projects.

With the Commercial Affordability Summit convening, COO sought to share what we learned from the pilot project, which concluded in 2022, and provide a platform for learning about additional strategies, models and programs that are currently being designed and implemented in support of an equitable and thriving small businesses environment and greater economic justice.

Communities of Opportunity (COO) and Grow America (formerly National Development Council) hosted this 3 session Asset Management Training series for community-based organizations or individuals that own real estate, are developing a space to own, or considering ownership in the future.

2021 Community Development Lunch & Learns series’ recordings are now viewable. These alternating deep dives on specific topics and issues of equitable community development, offered opportunities for participants to ask questions and discuss their projects with peers and community development experts.

In this first session, participants explore community-based strategies to build an equitable and regenerative economy, using the Just Transition framework.

In this second workshop, the focus is on the need to create and build new economic structures rooted in the experiences of our community.

With the Commercial Affordability Summit convening, COO sought to share what we learned from the pilot project, which concluded in 2022, and provide a platform for learning about additional strategies, models and programs that are currently being designed and implemented in support of an equitable and thriving small businesses environment and greater economic justice.

To support continuous improvement and learning for equitable contracting work COO sought to document where and how COO has been successful in creating more equitable procurement processes, particularly in the area of contracting, and what gaps continue to exist. The Equitable Contracting Report here, summarized a review of King County COO Community Service Agreements and Consultant Contract processes, best practices from the field, and themes from key informant interviews with COO community partners.

Learn more about crafting effective messages and getting audiences with local government to meet your goals. Build relationships and reputations that facilitate generative partnerships and ways to influence public leadership and represent your community.

COVID-19 has redefined nearly every process and task. This workshop will look at the digital tools for communicating at various levels (team members, clients, community members, funders) that can keep us socially connected while physically distant. These tools can be power campaigns even without pandemic restrictions.

Best Starts Early Support for Infants and Toddlers (ESIT) strategy is seeking community members to join a new Centering Black Excellence Community Workgroup! The workgroup will help guide ESIT priorities and recommendations so that they remain rooted in Black and African American community wisdom. 

How King County is organizing with other local entities and fighting back against the federal administration directives that affect our communities

The Washington Nonprofit Legal Checklist is intended to help nonprofits in Washington State avoid common legal risks and achieve better legal health. This is not legal advice, though the materials were created by the lawyers at Communities Rise.

An introductory toolkit for mutual aid organizing—from starting a group to sustaining it for the long haul

This program is ideal for: Anyone that is a part of movement work (activists, organizers, staff, etc.) that is ready to develop a stronger politic and take up practices of access and disability justice. General alignment with the 10 principles of Disability Justice. 

What do you do when a story about your community feels all wrong?
When others, detached from your struggle, reinforce messages that completely miss your dreams and reality? When your community is under attack and the truth is being flattened and replaced by disinformation? ‍You change the narrative and we fight back!

Repairing Roots: Historic Black Towns and Spatial Reclamation explores how these communities can guide national and local efforts for reparative spatial justice and emphasizes that their preservation and prosperity should be a top priority for policymakers, philanthropic organizations, and public officials. It calls for an approach led by these communities themselves, centering their voices in shaping the path to lasting repair and renewal. 

How Authoritarian Populist Politics Thrive in Contemporary Democracies — Key concepts to understand politics beyond the left-right paradigm. How can we bridge the gaps between "us" and "them" in a world divided by fear and grievance? This article explores:
- The blend of populist rhetoric and authoritarian practices
- The rise of these movements in democratic nations
- How exclusion deepens societal divides

Election cycles can be opportunities to deepen community engagement, sharpen narratives, and clarify organizational and movement values. Even after Election Day, how can we prepare ourselves as individuals and organizations to play the right roles, to respond quickly to unfolding events, and to buttress our connections and partnerships?

For many communities and nonprofits, the current landscape is confusing and alarming. In this FAQ, BMP focuses on how nonprofits could be affected by the current landscape, with an emphasis on those who serve vulnerable communities that are being targeted by many federal actions.

Office Hours are donation based, 30 minute appointments with an AORTA member who will offer thought partnership and one-on-one consultation; they are designed for individuals who are a part of or starting groups working towards racial, economic, and gender justice and are committed to power sharing and deep democracy.

Just Practice has compiled a short list of resources to help us connect, ground, fight and prepare for the years ahead.

In our new briefing, Transform Finance outlines various stages that investors may find themselves in exploring the space: understanding the landscape of EO funds, identifying the investment approaches of different funds, and comparing and evaluating the potential impact of funds. We provide recommendations for these stages as well as overall considerations to maximize impact and build the field. At the core of our recommendations is an analysis of 53 funds that finance EO in the United States and Canada, made across investment approaches, target financial returns, size, geographic focus and impact.

To attract, grow, and keep production teams in Seattle. In partnership with Seattle Center, the City is activating the M5 Creative Building (401 Mercer Street) for temporary use for film production and other creative production office space, conferences, workshops, controlled events, and productions.

ULMS Community Support program was created to make sure that young people who end up in the juvenile system are provided with the stability they need to lead safe, healthy, and productive lives

The Arc of King County is excited to announce TEEN SCENE, a brand new monthly meet-up group for teens age 13-17 with intellectual and developmental disabilities

DPN has released three new policy kits on empowering tenants through increasing housing supply and enshrining tenant protections in state and local law. DPN has also released a Deliberative Democracy Processes policy kit, an open resource for legislators, advocates, journalists, and citizens to learn how states can utilize citizen deliberation models to break gridlock, reduce special-interest capture, and build consensus