Community Change Initiatives Research Articles

Agents for change: developing transformative and Adaptive Leadership capacities among early-career extension professionals

PurposeThe Agents of Change program is a two-year, project-based learning program to develop Extension Professionals’ capacity to engage in Adaptive and Transformative Leadership. Its primary goal is to develop the capacity of Extension Professionals to engage in leadership to create more diverse, equitable, inclusive and just Extension programs and community change initiatives. This manuscript describes the program and an initial evaluation and results.FindingsResults of an evaluation of the first year of the program indicate that regular training sessions and support are appropriate for leadership development and that Extension Professionals are using the learning, awareness and tools from this program to address challenges with Adaptive and Transformative Leadership elements. Also, Extension professionals demonstrated commitment to personal growth, community engagement and understanding of their multifaceted roles as change agents.Originality/valueParticipants are sharing resources from the program with colleagues, leading meetings differently, questioning the status quo and pushing others to try new ways forward.

A Logic Model Using Theory of Change Applied in Grant Development of Civic Engagement for Racial Justice in Public Libraries

This poster highlights insights from application of a logic model using Theory of Change (ToC) applied in ongoing grant development of civic engagement for racial justice in public libraries of the American South. An externally funded grant project, Civic Engagement for Racial Justice in Public Libraries (RJ@PL), awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ “National Leadership Grants for Libraries” to the University of Alabama and the Chicago State University serves as focus in partnership with multiple state public libraries (August 2022 – July 2025). RJ@PL explores the role of public libraries in their support of racial justice and positive social change in communities. RJ@PL is conceptualized in five interrelated components in the logic model: (1) Assessment; (2) Strategic planning; (3) Actualization of information-based solutions; (4) Evaluation; (5) Dissemination. Data collected will help develop contextually relevant strategic information tools (e.g., roadmap, action plan, taxonomic framework of information responses) for civic engagement that public libraries can use to overcome problems related to racism in their communities. ToC will be used to develop the community engagement frameworks and strategic action plans. ToC is an approach to creating change that emerged from the efforts of philanthropic associations that funded comprehensive community change initiatives; it was developed to measure philanthropically funded projects’ progress and determine their efficacy in meeting their goals (Andrews, 2005; Weiss, 1995). RJ@PL bridges gaps at multiples levels, including (not limited to) social justice scholarship, competences and practices, and has strong implications for LIS education.
 

The social dynamics in establishing complex community climate change initiatives: the case of a community fridge in Scotland

Multiple factors are involved in community change processes, yet understanding how factors interact to shape these complex social processed is limited. This has important implications for both research and sustainability practice. This study examines key social dynamics in establishing complex community change initiatives using an in-depth action-oriented transdisciplinary approach with a case study of the development of a community fridge. Four critical social dynamics were identified: reinforcing interpretations, reinforcing interconnections, re-alignment of identities, and quality social relations involving multiple normative facets converging and diverging in different ways as the process unfolded. Initially, this led to a degenerative dynamic that heightened tensions between actors; however, re-alignment with wider social identities and expressions of the underlying normative dimensions involved in the initiative, a regenerative dynamic was created. This strengthened the conditions to support shared understanding, learning and enhanced relationships to enable different actors to work together to shape aspects of the initiative. Overall, the study highlights that future community-based change initiatives need to be guided by explicit approaches that work with social relationships, but where these relationships are conceptualised as dynamic normative spaces of interaction and exploration. This can inform understanding on how to develop beneficial reinforcing regenerative dynamics, where advances in one aspect of social relationships within initiatives can begin to reinforce others and ways that increase collective capacity as a whole. Developing this regenerative potential through social relationships within initiatives is thus critical for engaging with complex challenges across communities.

Creating Spaces for Young People to Collaborate to Create Community Change: Ohio's Youth-Led Initiative.

Scholars and researchers are increasingly calling attention to the need for community-based coalitions to become more inclusive of local residents and engage those most directly affected by the issues. One population, however, often remains the recipient of services as opposed to partners or leaders in community change initiatives: youth. Over the past several years in Ohio, adults convening and facilitating youth-led programs have been transforming their work by utilizing the Youth Empowerment Conceptual Framework and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's Strategic Prevention Framework to empower young people and ensure their equitable participation in community change efforts. This article provides an overview of Ohio's statewide youth-led initiative, highlighting how adult allies engaged young people in a data-driven strategic planning process and intentionally selected and implemented strategies designed to affect the health of their local communities. This initiative provides key insights into the Collaborating for Equity and Justice Principles 4, 5, and 6.

Strategic compatibility, collaboration and collective impact for community change

PurposeCommunities are best able to tackle complex social problems when solutions are achieved collaboratively. Inter-organizational partnerships are strongest and provide the greatest benefit to communities when the relationships are mutually compatible. The purpose of this paper is to introduce an evidence-informed approach to identifying and forming mutually compatible collaborations among organizations responsible for promoting community well-being and carrying out community-level interventions.Design/methodology/approachA three-stage case study examines the utility of a novel measurement tool for identifying opportunities for strategic collaboration. The strategic compatibility assessment (SCA) was designed to identify inter-organizational collaborative capacities within and across sectors as a means to motivate collaborative behaviors that are essential to community change initiatives that advance the collective impact.FindingsThe findings of this paper indicate the SCA is an effective tool for fostering mutually beneficial collaborative partnerships. A high degree of content, face and practical validity was evidenced in two independent studies of SCA, and organizations using the SCA tool reported a moderate-to-high degree of collaborative behavior in a post-intervention assessment of SCA outcomes. These findings provide field-based support for the SCA to promote cross-sector collaboration for community-level interventions.Originality/valueThe SCA tool describes the degree of collaboration among organizations that operate within a neighborhood; identifies potential points of mutual compatibility within the network; and creates pathways for leveraging collaborative behavior to promote community capitals. The aim of this research is to examine the potential of the SCA tool to shift the non-profit sector climate away from one characterized by competition toward one rich with collaboration.

Thriving Communities: A Model for Community-Engaged Grantmaking

Interact for Health is a health conversion foundation serving the three-state region of Greater Cincinnati, Ohio. Its current community change initiative, Thriving Communities, is a community-learning model that helps embed health promotion and advocacy work in communities while those communities build an equitable infrastructure with stakeholders to more rapidly spread evidence-based practices.

The Spatial Distribution of Organizational Resources and Resident Participation in Civic Life in Chicago Neighborhoods

AbstractBuilding and maintaining participation is an often elusive goal of many community change initiatives. Understanding how the neighborhood context contributes to resident participation can help develop and improve interventions that engage more residents and facilitate participation so that they are more likely to improve neighborhood conditions. This study examines whether neighborhood organizational resources are associated with two forms of participation: neighborhood-focused activism and volunteering. Spatial regression is used to explore how organizational resources are distributed across neighborhoods in Chicago. Then multilevel models test social organization theory claims about the extent to which organizational resources motivate participation in neighborhood-focused activism as compared to volunteering. Findings suggest an association between organizational resources and activism, supporting social organization theory. This effect is independent of neighborhood socioeconomic composition, w...

Inviting Emotional Connections to Ethnographic Research

Two central struggles facing activist scholars, including critical ethnographers of education, are (a) power relations researchers and participants navigate and (b) dissemination of our work to reach multiple audiences, including study participants and others outside academia. This one-act ethnodrama was written as part of a critical ethnography of a community change initiative. Ethnodrama is an appropriate choice given roles afforded participants and audience in which emotional connections and closeness of data and experience are highlighted.

Homegrown partnerships that make a difference for youth

Comprehensive community change initiatives have attracted attention and resources in recent decades as a way to improve outcomes for young people through aligning local systems and services. They have yielded positive outcomes and useful and inspiring lessons. However, they have also resulted in local disillusionment and outcomes that fall short of their goals. This article suggests that more organic approaches, based on purpose-driven partnerships, are worth considering, especially for communities that are just starting to think about collaboration or that lack the resources for more ambitious system change attempts. The authors discuss four such partnerships and suggest that they offer an alternative, practical, sustainable approach to community change.

Relationship building: the art, craft, and context for mobilizing the social capital necessary for systems change

Much has been written about the importance of relationship building and collaboration in community and policy change work. Yet, we know little about the process of successfully building relationships in this context. The Northeast Iowa Food and Fitness Initiative (FFI) is one of nine Kellogg-funded community change initiatives targeted at increasing access to healthy food and fitness activity. Using data collected from interviews of FFI leadership team members, we deconstruct the relationship-building process to focus on the iterative nature of social capital development and the impact of this process on generating additional assets in cultural, human, and political capital to create a spiraling-up process. The resulting merging of bonding and bridging social capital into generative social capital fashions resilient ties that span boundaries and expand the radius of trust.

The StrongWomen Change Clubs: engaging residents to catalyze positive change in food and physical activity environments.

Introduction. The epidemic of obesity is a multifaceted public health issue. Positive policy and environmental changes are needed to support healthier eating and increased physical activity. Methods. StrongWomen Change Clubs (SWCCs) were developed through an academic-community research partnership between researchers at Cornell University and Tufts University and community partners (cooperative extension educators) in rural towns in seven U.S. states. Extension educators served as the local leader and each recruited 10–15 residents to undertake a project to improve some aspect of the nutrition or physical activity environment. Most residents had limited (or no) experience in civic engagement. At 6 and 12 months after implementation, the research team conducted key informant interviews with SWCC leaders to capture their perceptions of program process, benchmark achievement, and self-efficacy. Results. At 12 months, each SWCC had accomplished one benchmark; the majority had completed three or more benchmarks. They described common processes for achieving benchmarks such as building relationships and leveraging stakeholder partnerships. Barriers to benchmark achievement included busy schedules and resistance to and slow pace of change. Conclusion. Findings suggest that community change initiatives that involve stakeholders, build upon existing activities and organizational resources, and establish feasible timelines and goals can successfully catalyze environmental change.

Engaging underrepresented youth populations in community youth development: Tapping social capital as a critical resource

For youth who are the most vulnerable to challenging community conditions, more limited opportunities, and poor health, educational and economic trajectories derive especially strong benefits from engagement in community youth development efforts. Although communities can benefit in powerful ways from the knowledge and insight of these youth populations, the experiences of vulnerable youth are often underrepresented in planning and decision making. This article draws on lessons learned from two communities that successfully engaged such youth in a community change initiative over four years. Key elements in creating the types of safe, supportive, and meaningful settings that promote young people's ongoing participation and leadership were intentionality and commitment; local knowledge of vulnerable populations; adult allies with key capacities; meaningful focus; resources for intensive outreach, relationship building, and youth support; and continuity of key adults. Each of these elements is described, identifying the ways they build on often underrecognized forms of social capital and offering lessons learned about engaging underserved youth populations in community youth development.

An Investigation of the Dynamic Processes Promoting Citizen Participation

This study expanded the citizen participation literature by examining the dynamic nature of citizen participation and the extent to which the factors associated with citizen participation may be moderated by resident leadership status. Longitudinal survey data collected from 542 residents in one small Midwestern city implementing a community change initiative provide some insight into the challenges surrounding the promotion of an active citizenry. Within this one community, citizenship behaviors of emergent resident leaders and residents uninterested in a leadership role were influenced, to some extent, by different factors and the importance of these factors shifted in only a 2 years time span. Future research is needed to determine if the dynamics uncovered in this study were due to the initiative or to the nature of citizen participation processes.

Implementation Guide for Community Change: Tools from First 5 Marin

Implementation Guide for Community Change: Tools from First 5 MarinCommunity change initiatives (CCIs) are longterm, place-based efforts that offer comprehensive services to residents of poor communities. They seek transformational change by replacing piecemeal approaches to social problems with broader efforts designed to strengthen a community socially, educationally, economically, physically, and culturally.CCIs have been around for many years, at least since the 1980s, and have been funded by both the public and private sectors. Supporters have included federal, state, and city governments, as well as many private foundations like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Ford Foundation. Some of these efforts have been deemed more successful than others, but a belief has persisted for more than three decades in the power of community-based systems change as a mechanism for transforming communities and their residents (Kubisch, Auspos, Brown, & Dewar, 2010).There is no such thing as a typical CCI. In fact, they do not even have a consistent label. Some are called comprehensive community initiatives, others place-based initiatives, and still others community development efforts. However, almost all have some things in common. For example, they feature long-term strategies that build on community assets and needs; incorporate local participation and leadership; aim for increased collaboration among social agencies; and seek change at multiple levels - individual, family, neighborhood, and systems. This means that even though community change initiatives have different structures, services, and funding, they share common implementation and evaluation challenges.The Implementation Guide for Community Change: Tools from First 5 Marin1 offers practical advice for those engaged in the day-to-day challenges of funding, implementing, or evaluating community change efforts in all of their diversity and complexity. It distills 13 years of useful structures and tools from First 5 Marin, a community change effort in California's Marin County that uses state dollars from a tobacco surtax to improve the health and well being of children ages birth to 5. While an earlier article in the Fall 2012 issue of The Foundation Review (Coffey, Farkouh, & Reisch, 2012) offered lessons learned from this effort in the context of the broader community change field, this resource is about the nuts and bolts of the community change process.The 67-page Implementation Guide, developed by First 5 Marin's long-term evaluation team at jdcPartnerships in collaboration with First 5 Marin's executive director, is organized to be easily accessible. While the reader would benefit from reading it cover to cover in order to get familiar with its range and depth, the guide can be referenced quickly as distinct implementation and evaluation needs or challenges arise during the community change process.The guide has six chapters. The first two briefly cover foundational elements and overarching lessons for a CCI - core elements, challenges, and pitfalls. As these issues have been covered in depth in other articles by the same authors, the remaining four chapters are the real meat of the guide, organized by the initiative's developmental stages - launch and start up, specializing and standardizing, integrating and disseminating, and finally renewing and regenerating.Chapters 3 through 6 begin with a brief context of what happened during each of First 5 Marin's developmental stages and why, and then quickly get practical. …

A Hunch without a Sound: Co-Constructing Meanings of Nonverbal and Verbal Interactions in Video Data

This narrative account describes a collaborative qualitative video data analysis process between a bilingual Deaf female researcher and a bilingual Puerto Rican female researcher. Via three processing points, we examine our journeys to co-construct meanings from a single video data source which was part of a larger ethnographic study of an urban community change initiative. We highlight how our respective epistemologies informed the process of watching, analyzing, and interpreting nonverbal and verbal interactions from a video segment. The video watching process included a hunch and discovery of a critical incident. While engaging independently and collaboratively in analysis, we confirmed how the critical incident revealed concepts of access and participation. This article is distinctive in that it highlights Deaf epistemology and qualitative inquiry processes through video data analysis of nonverbal interactions. Our work contributes to the growing body of methodology literature emphasizing collaborative social practices for video data analysis.

Dimensions of Change: A Model for Community Change Efforts

Keywords: Community change initiative, philanthropy, initiative design, systems change, children 0-5, first 5, place-based, evaluationChange, in the broadest and deepest sense, is required to bring about a more just and equitable world. One response from philanthropy to the need for such change is initiatives that analyze and then holistically focus on an issue or location. Such efforts, referred to here as community change initiatives (CCIs), are called by a host of other names: place-based initiatives, systemschange efforts, and community-development projects. The definition from the Aspen Institute in its most recent monograph on CCIs offers a good starting place:Although CCIs varied enormously depending on location, sponsor, and community capacity, the classic CCIs had similar design features. They analyzed neighborhood problems and assets holistically, created a plan to respond in a comprehensive way, engaged community actors, and developed a structure for implementing the plan. Each sought to achieve multiple results with a combination of inputs centered on some conception of community. Their goals included individual and family change, neighborhood change, and systems change. They operated according to community and capacity building principles. A wide variety of programmatic activities were open to them, from human services to economic development to social capital building strategies. (Kubisch, Auspos, Brown, & Dewar, 2010, p. 9)Community change initiatives in the United States span more than 30 years of experimentation, success, challenges, and failures. Over the years there has been an increasing body of literature that speaks to what works, what does not, and where there is more to be learned. These include papers from Connell and Kubisch (1998), Kubisch, Auspos, Brown, and Dewar (2002), Kubisch et al. (2010), and Brown and Fiester (2007).The purpose of this article is not to provide a history of CCIs as others have already done, but rather to introduce a framework that can be used to think about, design, and evaluate change initiatives. The Dimensions of Change Model (see Figure 1) developed in 2011 by jdcPartnerships,1 a national consulting firm located in the San Francisco Bay Area, evolved as a way to make sense of the change literature being reviewed for its client, the First 5 Marin Children and Families Commission in Marin County, Calif.The Dimensions of Change Model is offered as a tool for foundations, government bodies, consultants, and organizations involved in substantive efforts to bring about community change. The dimensions contained in the model offer a frame for addressing key aspects that emerge from the literature as fundamental to all change efforts.This article presents the model, and then uses the work of the First 5 Marin commission as an example to stimulate reflection and discussion about such initiatives. Lessons learned about change initiatives, culled from the literature and augmented by the experience and reflection of First 5 Marin, are offered and aligned with each dimension of the model.The Dimensions of Change ModelThe Dimensions of Change Model has five discrete but interconnected dimensions - structure, parameters, intention, approach, and people - with core considerations provided in relation to each. As with all models, there are limitations to this one. The reality of planning for any change initiative will not neatly conform to a model regardless of the efforts made to develop a visual representation of such a nonlinear process. Designing and implementing such change is not linear; it is iterative, dynamic, and even messy.StructureThe first dimension of change speaks to the structure of the organization. Initial decisions here (ideally prior to the start of an initiative) include who will lead and be involved and how the funding will work. Clarity in this area can be vital; change initiatives are lengthy endeavors and individuals involved often shift. …

¿Y Nosotros, Qué?: Moving beyond the Margins in a Community Change Initiative

Our ethnography focuses on an urban community change organization within a predominantly African American and Latino population. Latino Critical Race Theory and Critical Race Theory help us understand the Spanish speakers' positioning and how particularities of Latinas/os' experience challenged power relations and group cohesion. Our findings illustrate tensions and contradictions of black–brown communities working in tandem to work against oppression. We argue that manifestations of intergroup conflict negatively influenced the success of this effort. Urban environments are increasingly demographically diverse and understanding how cross-group dynamics are interpreted by traditionally marginalized populations is essential to ensuring the educational, economic, and social success of students. [community change initiative, social context of schooling, Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit), Latinos, African Americans]

Doing “Business as Usual”: Dynamics of Voice in Community Organizing Talk

This article examines discourse in a community change project committed to undoing “business as usual”—attempts to “fix” problems within the community without involvement of residents in the process. We show how, despite commitments to recognizing community “voice,” participants' orientation to powerful “centering institutions” (Jan Blommaert 2005) transformed and overrode community residents' critical contributions, thus realizing microinteractionally some recurring broader patterns of the process, and resulting in the unintended reproduction of business as usual. [community change initiative, social context of schooling, discourse analysis, contextualization]

Finding Place in Community Change Initiatives: Using GIS to Uncover Resident Perceptions of their Neighborhoods

The growing recognition that place matters has led to numerous foundation- and government-sponsored initiatives that attempt to simultaneously strengthen neighborhoods and address the needs of families that live there. Despite the centrality of the concept of neighborhood, these place-based initiatives have few tools to understand how residents identify with the space within their target areas. This article demonstrates how resident-drawn maps gathered in a household survey can be used to uncover individual and collective neighborhood definitions. Using data gathered as part of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Making Connections program in 10 cities, the study finds that there is considerable variation among residents in how they define their neighborhoods, but that there are also commonly held neighborhood identities that need to be taken into account in community practice. Funding for this analysis was provided by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

“Sorting Out” collective leadership: How Q-methodology can be used to evaluate leadership development

Q-methodology has proven to be an effective way to solicit participants' perceptions of outcomes. In this article, Q-methodology is described as a data collection tool that can be used to better evaluate the development of collective leadership. Additionally, this methodology provided a valuable tool for participants themselves (leadership development) and evaluators (evaluation development). In writing this article, we drew upon data from a longitudinal study of the Kellogg Leadership for Community Change (KLCC) initiative at six sites from 2002 through 2007 where multiple data collection strategies were employed, including Q-methodology.