While the local wellness fund framework emphasizes sources, uses, and structure as the core attributes a fund needs to focus on, there are factors that also influence the success and sustainability of a local wellness fund.
Community voice can be included in many local wellness fund processes and principles, like sharing power and applying an equity lens. Community engagement can help local wellness funds to build trust, gain buy-in, and develop accountability with the impacted community they serve. In the real world, incorporating community voice and building community capacity for engagement are not binary yes-or-no activities, and the collaborative supporting a local wellness fund can think of community voice activities as a spectrum — from one-way information sharing to full participation in decision-making and allocation of resources.
The resources found here offer local wellness funds the means for deeper incorporation of community voice, tools for better understanding how power dynamics may impact participation of community members, and strategies to engage community members across the local wellness fund’s operations
While the local wellness fund framework emphasizes sources, uses, and structure as the core attributes a fund needs to focus on, there are factors that also influence the success and sustainability of a local wellness fund.
Community voice can be included in many local wellness fund processes and principles, like sharing power and applying an equity lens. Community engagement can help local wellness funds to build trust, gain buy-in, and develop accountability with the impacted community they serve. In the real world, incorporating community voice and building community capacity for engagement are not binary yes-or-no activities, and the collaborative supporting a local wellness fund can think of community voice activities as a spectrum — from one-way information sharing to full participation in decision-making and allocation of resources.
The resources found here offer local wellness funds the means for deeper incorporation of community voice, tools for better understanding how power dynamics may impact participation of community members, and strategies to engage community members across the local wellness fund’s operations.
Community Conversations: Mobilizing the Ideas, Skills, and Passion of Community Organizations, Governments, Businesses, and People by Paul Born
Community engagement and collaboration can lead to a larger collective impact, but first collaboratives need to create the right environment for conversations to establish shared goals. Born says, “I love conversations – especially big, messy, and purposeful ones.” Born sees conversation as a larger process of change. His book provides an understanding of the building blocks of community conversations (e.g., conversing, engaging, collaborating, and casting a vision), as well as 10 techniques for community conversations that local wellness funds can employ.
Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership
Incorporating community voice is not an all or nothing proposition. There is a spectrum of engagement that encompasses one-way information sharing to full participation in decision-making and allocation of resources. This resource provides a chart that can be used to assess a local wellness fund’s current community engagement efforts and a path toward advancing community-driven solutions.
Consider using the spectrum in conjunction with the Community Engagement Planning Canvas developed by the Tamarack Institute.
Roundtable on Population Health Improvement: Community-Led Initiatives
This workshop was hosted by the National Academies of Sciences Engineering Medicine to understand the underpinnings of community-led initiatives; to explore power as it pertains to the agency needed for communities to articulate their health and well-being needs and act to address them; and to examine approaches, elements, capacities, and ecosystems that support communities. A recording of the two-day workshop is available here, but two sessions of particular interest are
- Community Power: Approaches & Models featuring: Meme Styles, from MEASURE; Roxanne Carrillo Garza, from Healthy Richmond; and Arvind Singhal, from University of Texas El Paso, with moderated discussion by Lourdes Rodriguez, from the St. David’s Foundation.
- From Vision to Action: Effective Ways to Support Grassroots Community Power Building featuring: Hahrie Han, from JHU’s Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute; Ethan Frey, from the Ford Foundation; Julie Fernandes, from the Rockefeller Family Foundation; Taj James, from Full Spectrum Capital Partners; and Mimi Ho, from the Movement Strategy Center, with moderated discussion by Aditi Vaidya, from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
