“Policy change can be big or small; it just has to be right.”
Julián Castro, Former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and Mayor of San Antonio
Description
This POWER Play emphasizes the integral role of community voices in shaping policies that affect their lives. It advocates for a shift from top-down decision-making to a more inclusive, participatory approach, ensuring that community members—particularly those often marginalized—actively contribute and influence public decisions.
Why it matters:
Community-driven decision-making aligns policies with the unique needs and values of the community, leading to more effective, relevant, and sustainable outcomes. It fosters a sense of ownership and trust among community members, ensuring that public resources are utilized in a way that truly benefits those in need.
How to do this:
- Implement a comprehensive approach to gather both quantitative and qualitative data, ensuring diverse community perspectives are captured.
- Learn more about how that was done in the ARPA process in Chelsea, MA here.
- Disaggregate data and make an active effort to get information from groups where data may be missing or misinterpreted.
- This survey was developed to collect data on small businesses in Holyoke, MA—a population group struggling post pandemic, yet had no data available to assess their exact needs. This sample survey can help your city or town understand the impacts of COVID-19 on small businesses and can be amended to fit your unique context.
- Form panels of diverse community members to ensure varied perspectives are considered. These panels should be consulted on an ongoing basis and play a key role in advising policy directions.
- Learn how to develop an advisory or steering committee through this step-by-step guide.
- Use this sector and partner wheel for examples of population groups to engage for balanced representation.
- Providing training for panel members in engagement best practices, equity, and policy analysis.
- Note: It is important that a skilled facilitator leads these meetings. See this example for best practices for meeting facilitation and participant guidelines.
- Here is a repository of facilitation tools, activities, and training resources for convening and facilitating group processes.
- Enable community members to have direct say in public fund allocation decisions.
- The Stanford Participatory Budgeting Platform allows cities, municipalities, states, foundations and other organizations to run a PB election in which people can vote on the budget.
- See an example of leading a funding proposal review committee here and best practices for scoring review processes here.
- Develop materials (such as videos and accessible print materials) and offer workshops to educate community members about the budgeting process and how to effectively participate.
- See an example of a webinar that details ways to navigate local policy to advance community change here.
- Be explicit about engagement goals, setting clear metrics for engaging underrepresented groups. Actively seek to include underrepresented voices, ensuring a balanced representation in all engagement processes.
- Here is an example of how the Massachusetts Department of Public Health did that for the MA BSAS Trans & Gender Expansive Community Advisory Board.
Example in practice:
In Everett, MA, the Everett Youth Initiative Council (EYIC), a youth-led coalition, organized for and was awarded $1 million of Everett’s ARPA funding to conduct and implement a youth-led participatory budgeting process. EYIC was founded in 2021 in direct response to the typical ways that Everett youth were often excluded from local government. Following the example of youth-led participatory budgeting efforts in neighboring cities, EYIC challenged Everett municipal leaders to rethink their traditional ways of business, pushing local leaders to better consider the disproportionate impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on youth and the need to center their experiences in decision-making on ARPA funding allocations. EYIC built support and collected signatures to advocate for their $1 million allocation. Once they were awarded the money, EYIC led a voting drive for all youth in Everett, engaging more than 1,000 students that selected four projects to be implemented: No-fare Charlie cards (public transit passes), scholarships for graduating seniors, little pantries providing staples in Everett, and the installation of gyms in public parks.
Tools and resources to support learning:
- 3 Tips for Community Decision-Making from Power to Change
- Best Practices: Effective Community Structures
- Community Voice and Power Sharing Guidebook