Introduction

We at the Othering and Belonging Institute stand committed to creating a world in which all people belong. Belonging entails being respected as equal human beings, with the right to make demands upon and to co-create the systems and structures that shape society.1 Government is among the most powerful of those structures, with the singular capacity to anchor systems, policies and processes that can ensure wellbeing and belonging for all. Realizing this potential requires, in part, changing governing processes in ways that expand the possibility of co-creation. In other words, to create a future in which all people belong, we must cultivate practices and structures for belonging in governing today.

But what does belonging in governing actually entail? Across the public realm, many government officials, community organizations, scholars, and individual members of the public have innovated and honed approaches to this question through direct engagement in governing processes. At the same time, the practice of governing for belonging is continually emergent, never fixed. New questions and challenges surface as political and cultural landscapes shift, different stakeholders enter the conversation, and more strategies are tested, refined, and scaled.

Furthermore, while many individuals from across different sectors, levels of power, and geographies are seeking strategies for co-creation and governing for belonging―and critically, the relational bridges to enact those strategies―there is not yet a firmly established “field” that brings all of these practitioners together. That field is in development, and this paper aims to contribute to its formation by identifying concrete strategies for furthering belonging through collaborative governance, particularly for individuals in government roles who are actively seeking new ways to engage constituents more deeply than conventional, transactional forms of public engagement allow.

In addition to sharing lessons from established efforts, this research also aims to support the exchange of perspectives across both sides of the proverbial “table.” To this end, the case studies in this paper draw from interviews with individuals positioned within both government and community organizations, as well as other sources that reflect both perspectives. We hope that this supports the development of a base of practical knowledge that is shared between government and community groups seeking to engage each other in collaborative governance as a starting point for bridging perspectives, deepening alignment and mutuality, and ultimately, enacting shared strategies as a cohesive field. This paper is thus intended for anyone, from any sector or positionality, seeking to join a broader ecosystem of practitioners working together to build belonging in governing. 

Collaborative Governance as an Essential Component of Democracy and Belonging

In the day-to-day of governing, many public officials find that conventional practices of community engagement fall short of producing equitable outcomes or the meaningful impact they aspire to. Meanwhile, many members of the public are exhausted by the sharing of their time and energy by participating in public engagement processes, without materialized community benefit. Government officials and community groups also commonly get stuck in an adversarial “us versus them” dynamic, undergirded by established power structures and familiar patterns that perpetuate fragmentation. Encouragingly, more and more people are leaning into the understanding that this is a false dichotomy, with the recognition that there are people on all sides who hold common goals, values, and identities. Many also recognize that governments and community groups currently face a shared threat to these points of commonality: rising authoritarianism, which is driving the hostile destabilization of public institutions, withdrawal of public supports that ensure access to basic needs, and deep political polarization―all of which are causing profound harm to the communities that we mutually belong to and serve.2

In this context, collaboration between government entities and community groups―and more specifically, deep collaboration embedded within governing structures and processes, what we refer to as collaborative governance―becomes an imperative: it is key to reclaiming and protecting democracy, achieving shared equity goals, meeting community needs, and solving problems that require capacities that neither side holds alone.  

To further define collaborative governance, we turn to the definition of co-governance developed by Race Forward and Partners for Dignity & Rights: “a collection of participatory models and practices in which government and communities work together through formal and informal structures to make collective policy decisions, co-create programs to meet community needs, and ensure those policies and programs are implemented effectively.”3 In this definition, it is important to hold that “government” and “communities” are not abstractions; they are constituted of real people who hold responsibilities and contribute to governing. Moreover, they are not mutually exclusive; when we focus on the people responsible for government roles, we see that they too, are a part of the community. And through the implementation of collaborative governance, members of the public in turn are a part of the government.

Collaborative governance differs from typical forms of public engagement in three key ways. Where there is collaborative governance, there is:

• Shared power and decision making authority. Instead of the public’s role being passive recipients of decisions made or having a limited role in contributing input, they actively have a role and say within the decision-making process.
• Ongoing partnership. Collaborative governance focuses on building long-term relationships and engagement rather than one-off listening sessions or public comments that do not necessarily impact the final decisions made by those in government. 
• Shared responsibility for implementation and outcomes. Participants in collaborative governance share responsibility for implementation, adaptation and outcomes.

With shared power and responsibility for the public good at its core, collaborative governance is a form of democracy in action. It lives in the everyday work of designing and implementing public policies and programs. While these practices may appear small compared to the monumental challenge of reclaiming and protecting democracy, it is through these incremental shifts within the governing systems we interact with day-to-day that we can begin to shift culture. Through enacting concrete practices and strategies for collaborative governance, we can set new norms of engagement―such that fairness and prioritization of the common good are commonly held expectations of government, and furthermore, expectations that we all hold of each other. And just as critically, we can build up the institutional and relational capacity to realize those expectations.

Charting a Path Forward as a Field

The evolution of collaborative governance theory and practice is reflected in a substantial body of academic literature from public administration,4 urban planning,5 and other disciplines.6 This research overlaps with work on transforming community engagement,7 participatory governance,8 participatory democracy, collaborative planning, and other related concepts. At the growing edge of practice, organizations such as Partners for Dignity and Rights9 and Race Forward,10 Dēmos,11 the Whirlwind Institute,12 and the Just Futures Project13 have generated critical research, insights, and tools for using collaborative governance to advance equity, racial and economic justice, and belonging. And beyond the cases and lessons that have been documented, many more exist and stand to offer new insights.

As literature and practice reflect, collaborative governance is a growing edge for both the public sector and community organizations. For many government and community leaders on the frontlines, the challenge is more urgent than ever, and those of us working to strengthen collaborative governance need to look to each other to create pathways forward.

With this intention, Part II of this paper offers five case studies in the form of parables that illuminate potential pathways and important lessons. Each tells a story of powerful practices of collaborative governing for belonging, and together they reflect a set of principles that are key to any effort to build sustained systems for collaborative governance.

The examples we shared represent complex stories told in short form. Each parable is written about a unique place with its own context, successes, and challenges. The parables reflect on both the promising steps taken towards collaborative governance and more difficult aspects of each effort. From these cases, we also elevate key learnings and new questions for the future of research and experimentation with governance practices.

In Part III, we synthesize the principles, lessons, and emerging questions that the five cases reveal. We invite you to reflect on these with us as a colleague within the growing field of collaborative governance practitioners, as a member of your own community where you have a stake in governance decisions, and as an individual with a vital role in building for a healthy and vibrant democracy rooted in belonging.

Parables of Governments Building for Belonging 

We share the following five examples of collaborative governance in the form of parables. As parables, they are not comprehensive examinations of each case. Rather, they are short stories that provide some of the essence of each case with selected details. While every story involves much more complexity beyond our lens, our chosen focal point is the lessons learned regarding practical strategies and principles for effective, sustained, and equitable collaborative governance.

These cases were selected because our team has either worked directly with the groups involved, or been inspired by their creative approaches to advancing collaborative governance. They are not intended to define a singular, best practice approach to collaborative governance, because the best path forward for any place must always be tailored to its community’s unique context. Additionally, many of the initiatives highlighted are still underway and continually evolving. As we should expect with any collaborative governance process, the work is never perfect or fully complete; there is always more work needed to sustain and further progress, and there are always setbacks and lessons learned. As one of the practitioners we interviewed said, “it is not about best practices, it is about improved practices.” We view these examples as important stories to tell because they illustrate an arc of efforts towards government system transformation from hierarchical or exclusionary, to processes that are more inclusive, authentic and generative.

The five parables are outlined below. Click the plus (+) signs to read more about each case study, and scroll down to find Part III of the report, "Shifts and Strategies towards Collaborative Governance: From Parables to Practice."

California Social Housing Design Circles: Centering Lived Experience and Imagination in Policymaking

As part of developing policy recommendations to respond to the needs of residents impacted by the housing affordability crisis, the State of California commissioned a community engagement process led by a partnership of nonprofit organizations and policy researchers. They convened workshops in which residents collectively imagined a housing system structured to ensure stability for all, with a focus on what residents’ lived experience of this housing should be.

Context

In 2023, the California legislature passed the Stable and Affordable Housing Act (Senate Bill 555), which established a definition of social housing in state law and required the state’s Housing and Community Development Department (HCD) to produce a study and policy recommendations for creating social housing at scale. SB 555 was authored in partnership with leading housing justice coalitions representing hundreds of organizations across the state. Advocates see the law as the first step toward building a thriving social housing system that serves all Californians who cannot afford market rate rents. 

“Co-governance is about everyday people and people within government institutions standing shoulder-to-shoulder. So we have to do two things at once: to ensure everyday people are ready to govern, and that our governance systems are amenable and ready for everyday people to govern, [with the understanding that] we need new deciders [when it comes to decisions] about the structure… and what the strategy should be.”

Social housing, as defined in SB 555, includes an element of collaborative governance: “Residents have the right to participate directly and meaningfully in decision making affecting the operation and management of the housing units in which they reside.” This principle is carried through to the requirements of the study itself, which include a mandate for community engagement. The law specifically requires input from residents unable to afford market rents, alongside feedback from tenant organizers, nonprofit entities, and public agencies. To meet this requirement, HCD and their contractor, the Terner Center for Housing Innovation, chose to partner with two organizations, Liberation in a Generation (LibGen) and Tenants Together, who hold deep experience working with historically marginalized communities to shape policy and systems change.

Creating an effective community engagement process is both a process design and organizing challenge. Social housing is a new concept to most Californians, and it opens up many complex questions. For example: How should the state determine eligibility for social housing? What would it look like for residents to meaningfully participate in decisions about their housing, and what kinds of decisions would this include? What should happen when a social housing resident cannot pay their rent on time? These questions can be difficult for anyone to answer, in large part because they reference a housing model that is far from the reality of what most people experience in their everyday life. For many tenants, their frame of reference is renting a unit on the private market, having little or no say in decisions made by their landlord, and living with uncertainty of potential rent increases that could force them to move out of their home. The challenge is thus creating a process in which participants can collectively imagine and step into a future where social housing is commonplace, the actual place they call home, in order to spark dialogue about how that future social housing system should work. 

In addition to the attention placed on session design and facilitation, the team developed and resourced an outreach strategy to ensure that low-income and moderate-income residents were able to participate. The team allocated funding to 22 organizations to conduct outreach and serve as trusted messengers. Stipends were provided to all participants, in addition to food, childcare, and language interpretation at all sessions. With an average household income of $30,000 among the hundreds of participants, the process successfully engaged many low-income residents who have directly experienced the burden of unaffordable rent and stress of housing instability. 

Strategies

To set the table for meaningful discussion, LibGen brought their experience in designing and facilitating what they call policy design circles, which draw upon traditions of speculative design, participatory design and traditional qualitative research methods as a starting point for collaborative governance. For LibGen, speculative design is a practice of storytelling and worldbuilding: creating a story about a fictional future that does not exist, complete with characters and detailed scenarios, for people to imagine themselves in, interact with, and explore possibilities beyond the limits of their current reality.  

LibGen’s approach involves having participants engage with artifacts: physical and digital objects that bring the future scenario to life. They function as “probes to elicit participants’ emotions, reactions, fears and hopes about policy proposals and how they’d be put into practice,” explains Solana Rice, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of Liberation in a Generation.

While engaging this future world, people carry with them their lived experiences of housing: the aspects of their current home that they love and hate, feelings about neighbors and their neighborhood, and their idea of a dream home. Many also carry fears, struggles, and grief related to home: concerns of safety, uncertainty over how they’ll make this month’s rent, and even trauma of the loss of home. The sessions are designed to tap into these emotions as a way of clarifying what social housing must look like in order to be just, fulfilling, and responsive to low-income residents’ needs. With this input, the facilitators can identify values and beliefs, themes, and eventually policy recommendations that can advance these visions and how the state can implement them.

In the social housing policy design circles, participants were given envelopes said to contain a letter from the fictional California Social Housing Agency in response to the story characters’ application for tenancy in a social housing unit. Just the act of opening up the envelope prompted emotions rooted in lived experiences and memories. For some it prompted anticipation of a brighter future. For others, it elicited fear that the letter is a notice that an application was denied and that future was then foreclosed―a situation they had experienced in the past. The participants then read the letter, which was a notice of the characters’ eligibility for social housing. The letter detailed the terms of that housing, including rent as a share of the characters' incomes, requested features like accessibility, and a link to an app where they can find listings and images of homes for which they qualify.  

Once participants situated themselves within that scenario, the facilitators asked for their feedback. Who should be eligible for social housing, and who should receive priority access? If the cost of rent is based on residents’ incomes, what should happen to one’s rent if their income changes? 

Participants inevitably held differing opinions on the policy questions, which they then explored through facilitated discussion. By stepping into this story and experience about the future, participants could more concretely imagine what a day-to-day reality in social housing would be like, connect to the questions more personally, and surface new insights together. Instead of leading with technical questions, the conversation shifted the starting point for policy design to what Californians actually need and hope for when it comes to housing, in their own words and based on their real lived experiences. “We are setting a field for what is possible and allowing folks to react. There can be a concern that we are upping people’s hopes if we set a future where social housing actually exists, [but] that’s our job. Our job is not to give false promises; it’s to clearly hear what people do and don’t want, and to then set ourselves on that path―not to say what is and isn’t possible. Our job is to say let’s make that possible,” says Rice. In this sense, LibGen brings a unique capacity and orientation that government staff are not always in a position to hold.

The policy design circles thus challenge the prevailing boundaries of policymaking as a technical exercise done solely by professionals. The process of imagination, collective sensemaking, and grounding in personal experience is, in fact, policymaking. This redefinition of policymaking also calls for a more expansive definition of policymaker: “We start with a worldview that everyone is a policymaker, and that everyone can govern,” Rice explains.  “Co-governance is about everyday people and people within government institutions standing shoulder-to-shoulder. So we have to do two things at once: to ensure everyday people are ready to govern, and that our governance systems are amenable and ready for everyday people to govern, [with the understanding that] we need new deciders [when it comes to decisions] about the structure… and what the strategy should be.” The policy design circles are an intervention on both fronts. 

Impact and Lessons 

After analyzing and thematizing all of the feedback from the sessions, the team shared their findings back with the 22 organizations who served as outreach partners in order for them to add nuance and context that may have been missed in the distillation of findings. This step was key for creating transparency and accountability, providing a space for participants to understand how their feedback was addressed and respond to conclusions reached before policy decisions are finalized. 

“Our job is not to give false promises; it’s to clearly hear what people do and don’t want, and to then set ourselves on that path―not to say what is and isn’t possible. Our job is to say let’s make that possible.”

A central challenge at this stage of any community engagement process is accounting for the natural diversity of viewpoints articulated by participants. For example, participants had varied ideas about how residents should be involved in decisions about property management. In one session, participants felt that effective decision-making should involve collaboration between residents and the property owner through a resident council. In other sessions, some felt strongly that residents should have full decision-making authority, while others expressed that they would not want to be involved in democratic decision-making processes with their neighbors. The complexity of these findings point to recommendations for both process and policy: that iterative process with additional feedback loops and deeper discussion is necessary, and that a social housing program should support a range of governing and ownership configurations that can respond to different community needs and wants. 

Another challenge is ensuring that the insights surfaced from the policy design circles and the full study are taken up by the state legislature and ultimately bring about change to the system. HCD will publish the Social Housing Study through a public process by the end of 2026, but the full path to implementation is still to be determined. This uncertainty points to the importance of sustained partnership, resident engagement, and community organizing. For LibGen, the policy design circles are more than a singular phase of a study; they serve as a starting point for ongoing collaborative governance. On one front, LibGen’s work has established a role and process for participation that has the potential to continue beyond the SB 555 process. On another front, the policy design circles created a space for organizing and strengthening community capacity to collaboratively govern. Rice states that “LibGen was clear from the beginning that the intention was for this process to not be a ‘one-and-done’―that this engagement serves to build upon the already existing base-building and movement work of social housing advocates, to expand the number of people who know about, care about, and are ready to act on behalf of advancing social housing.” Moreover, “it’s not only up to the government agencies to continue the engagement; collaborative governance means it’s a partnership, and it requires all of us to keep partnering.”

Scroll down to continue exploring the parables, and when you are ready, click here to jump to Part III, “Shifts and Strategies towards Collaborative Governance: From Parables to Practice.”

Michigan Youth Funding Collaboration: Bridging Differences to Serve Youth

In Michigan, the state opened up its decision making on how funds for youth programs would be distributed, and an unusually large set of youth service providers joined the committee. Despite their differences, the members formed a collective identity, shaped funding decisions together, and evolved into a "belonging network" with a life beyond the committee process. 

Context

In response to a glaring lack of support for youth outside of school, a statewide coalition calling itself the Michigan After School Partnership (MASP) formed and successfully advocated for a new state allocation to support after-school/out-of-school youth programming. But in the first funding cycle, similar to many public funding initiatives, there were concerns about inequities in funding distribution. Organizations with greater resources and experience in securing similar funds received the majority of the awards, while smaller programs, particularly those serving and run by low-income communities of color, were left with less. 

Recognizing the need to interrupt the inequitable funding process, MASP advocated for the state to form a committee of afterschool providers to guide equitable program design. With support from the governor, the Michigan Department of Education agreed and partnered with MASP and two facilitators, Hugh Vasquez from the National Equity Project and Tony Smith from Whyspeople, to steward the committee process. 

Strategies

Typically, advisory committees are limited to 13-14 members and selectively chosen, but the Michigan team chose a different approach. They knew that hearing from more people would offer better understanding of the true needs and wishes of youth across the state. With the goal of building for belonging and hearing from "all," the committee abandoned customs that would limit inclusion and took bold action to set new precedent. After sending out an application for the committee to several hundred after-school programs and experts across the 10 regions in the state, the facilitators received 150 applications. Instead of attempting to whittle the group down, the state and MASP took a bold risk and accepted every person who applied. At the first meeting, 130 members showed up representing a wide range of regions, ethnic, and economic backgrounds. However, youth themselves were not part of the committee.  

With the new committee formed, the question became: “How can we build and become a collective that could bridge across conflicting interests and identities for successful co-creation to take place?” 

 

In the first year, the committee co-created guiding principles. The practice of establishing guiding principles helps create a shared way of being and criteria for decisions in an otherwise obscure space that the people are entering into from all different interest points and walks of life. The facilitators introduced the Othering and Belonging Institute’s Belonging Design Principles and the National Equity Project’s Introduction to Liberatory Design. Members studied, debated, and reflected on these principles, connecting to their own experiences. The guiding principles not only structured their collaborative governance process, but also informed the funding formula they later developed. 

The committee also engaged in “expanding identities” sessions where members broaden their sense of self beyond fixed identities and regional loyalties. Facilitator Hugh Vasquez reported that “We knew that you can't expand identities by doing one activity at one session, it happens over time. We implemented activities from day one with this group that were meant to build bridges and community across differences and we led activities at every session that were meant to do this.”

For instance, in one session they asked everyone to find two other people that come from a different part of the state and complete the sentence "I am _____" (filling the blank with an identity). They asked them to fill in this blank not just with an identity that they often talk about like race, gender, etc., but with an identity that is less obvious, like:

"I am an auntie"

"I am an artist"

"I am coach"

"I am someone who prays a lot"

"I am sometimes fearful"

They were asked to identify what they learned about their partners in terms of what more they have in common. These exercises helped to establish and shift the group away from approaching this process with a competitive mindset to one of curiosity, connection, and collective purpose. Committee members began to see themselves as part of a collective rather than just representatives of a particular program or community.  

When mistrust of the process surfaced just after the committee was convened, the state agency staff and MASP faced their first big challenge. Some members of the committee publicly criticized the process, raising concerns that their input was not going to have a real impact on funding decisions. The first meeting of the committee was right after funding decisions were made about the first round of funding, so the members feared that they were being included too late into the process to have an impact on funding decisions. The design group was faced with a decision. Instead of stopping out of fear, or ignoring concerns and pushing on, the team (Michigan After School Partnership, facilitators, and state staff) decided to pause, share a statement with information about the decision-making process and powers of the committee, and ask every member to reapply for the committee if they wished to remain involved. What could have drastically shrunk the committee, to their surprise, produced greater buy-in and commitment to the process, with 120 members reapplying and affirming their commitments to the process and its potential outcome. State department leaders and MASP moved through fear, conflict, and the unknown through bold risk taking and commitment to shared principles, and the outcomes were much better than what the fear promised. 

Impact and Lessons 

There was tension between MASP and the Department of Education about the direction of the process and decisions about the committee, design principles, and other approaches that were new to the state. For those moments, trust already built between the MASP leadership and the state was crucial. MASP’s deep organizing skills and coalition building between those in government, community, and philanthropy with power and influence was also essential to ensuring that the process continued. 

As the committee reviewed the existing funding process (from requests for proposals to award decision criteria), the guiding principles came into practical use. Members identified where the process was exclusionary and targeted towards privilege, having developed the muscle and lens of belonging and social equity. Their recommendations on grant language and funding criteria were incorporated, such as identifying gaps in rural areas in Michigan that were not receiving funding. 

Looking back, Erin Skene-Pratt, Executive Director of Michigan Afterschool Partnership reflected:

The Michigan Out-of-School Time Committee reflects an ongoing journey toward a more equitable and connected system. Through its focus on belonging, the committee has helped bring providers across the state into closer alignment around a shared North Star—that all young people should have access to high-quality out-of-school time experiences where they feel valued and supported. At the same time, the committee’s collective advocacy has contributed to increased public investment in out-of-school time, while helping shape how those resources are distributed to better reflect community needs. While there is more to be done, this work is laying the foundation for a system that is more inclusive, responsive, and aligned around what young people need to thrive.

The funding directed by the committee has increased annually, from $10 million in 2021 to $75 million in 2025, with yearly increases in the number of grantees and 80 percent of funds distributed to community-based organizations. 

“How can we build and become a collective that could bridge across conflicting interests and identities for successful co-creation to take place?”  

Now in the fourth year of the fund, and third year of the committee, the group has evolved into what they are calling a “Belonging Network.” Members from across the state now see themselves as part of a collective with a shared purpose, committed to building belonging networks in each of their home regions. The impact of building relationships across differences and collective identity around shared values extend far beyond the initial process. This showed up at the interpersonal level. For example, during lunchtime the facilitators saw people walking up to those they didn’t know and engaging deeply with one another.

Participants wanted to know how the team had created such a different experience. Several members reflected back to the facilitators, “I don't know what you did, but this is so important for me to be here… I've never been in a group that felt like this… I didn’t get funding, but I’m coming back because of what’s here. What did you do?” The facilitators ended up leading a session unpacking the bridging strategies and intentional process design per the requests, to support members facilitating similar processes of their own.

Scroll down to continue exploring the parables, and when you are ready, click here to jump to Part III, “Shifts and Strategies towards Collaborative Governance: From Parables to Practice.”

Washington Assemblies: Building Consensus on Solutions

In Washington State, communities most impacted by climate change, environmental injustice, and economic inequity were convened through assemblies that allowed them to co-create and prioritize solutions, and influence the decision-making of city and state programs and policy. 

Context

In 2021, the state of Washington released a 10-year Plan to Dismantle Poverty, the product of several years of planning by a multi-sector collaborative. One of the primary strategies recommended in the plan is to “Make equal space for the power and influence of people and communities disproportionately affected by poverty and inequality in decision-making.” In subsequent listening sessions and convenings with community-based organizations across the state about how to elevate the innovation and leadership of those historically excluded from state-level decision making, participants advocated for collaborative governance as a guiding framework and assemblies as the best process for engaging community. 

The goal for the state, according to an agency staff member collaborating on the effort, was to:

Bring together so many diverse stakeholders - ten state agencies, the racial and ethnic commissions, business, philanthropy, think tanks, tribes, nonprofits, the Left, the Right, AND center those who stand to benefit the most from policy, programs and budgets at the state level. Our hypothesis is that when you center those who stand to benefit the most from an equitable economic recovery, then you will get to an equitable economic recovery.

“[The assembly] model allows for the trust and the relationships to happen. It shelves the ‘us and them’ between government and community and turns it into a ‘we’.”

Assemblies were seen as a departure from traditional community engagement and toward a path for community members to discuss in depth and reach agreements about what solutions would best dismantle poverty. Using assemblies promised to strengthen the civic muscle in communities historically excluded from, and distrusting of, government, and to create a mechanism where the solutions could come directly from the community and allow them to co-create programs with government staff. This type of collaboration would be mutually beneficial, and also reflect a shift in power: in the words of Faduma Fido of People’s Economy Lab, one of the lead organizers, “We were going beyond a demand for inclusion to a demand for leverage.”

At the same time, a similar process was unfolding in Seattle. As the city prepared to update its Climate Action Plan, city staff were hearing similar calls for assemblies from community partners, such as the Green New Deal Oversight Board – a city advisory board focused on advocating for climate and environmental justice across the city’s policies, programs, and investments. The city needed community input on setting priorities for climate solutions. Elise Rasmussen, the city Interim Climate Justice Advisor, described the context thus: “We had heard from community. We didn’t want to go back and ask them the same questions over and over again. So it wasn’t about ‘tell us what your needs are’, it was a step beyond that of getting in depth about what the solutions are, and people coming together from different backgrounds and building consensus.” The city recognized that traditional engagement would not be enough to do this. Following the lead of community recommendations, city staff began a collaborative process of holding community assemblies. They identified local anchor organizations and partnered with the People’s Economy Lab to host four local assemblies: one focused on labor and worker protections during climate hazards, one with residents in communities directly impacted by environmental injustice, one led by youth, and one with indigenous communities. 

Strategies 

Assemblies may sound similar to a typical public workshop or community planning event, but they differ in critical ways. Firstly, assemblies require more time and commitment from residents because they are designed for deeper, more substantive participation. Participants in Washington were asked to spend at least nine hours in the assemblies. Some of the assemblies occurred as a single all-day event, and others were multiple sessions on different days (with the same participants in each session). Recognizing that participants brought deep lived experience but varied levels of technical knowledge, the first phase of each assembly focused on shared learning so that everyone could understand the relevant concepts, policy, and science. The second phase centered lived experience and solutions design, often through activities like mural boards and small-group deliberation.

[F]or those willing to take the risk, assemblies save time, money, and political capital in the long run by producing solutions that are more aligned with community priorities and buy-in, and thus more likely to succeed.

The host of each assembly was an organization with deep relationships in communities most impacted by the climate crisis and poverty. These anchor organizations took on the core responsibilities of outreach, tailoring agendas to their communities, facilitation, and providing stipends, while city and state staff stepped back from control and into a support role. City and state staff were present at the assemblies, listening and in some cases filling roles as note takers for the discussions. The city and state contracted with the anchor organizations and supported the development of the assemblies through research and collaborative planning. A total of six assemblies were held at the state level and four at the city level. After the assemblies concluded, the work shifted into synthesis and community review. Movement partners such as Peoples’ Economy Lab and other anchor organizations compiled all notes, coded them, and pulled out themes, and then brought this synthesis back to the city and state agencies and participants to check for accuracy before publishing reports. 

Impact and Lessons 

The products of local assemblies are being used to directly inform the update to Seattle’s Climate Action Plan, shaping a new set of city commitments that center public health and ensure frontline communities have what they need to adapt to a changing climate. Assembly recommendations also feed into the Green New Deal Oversight Board’s policy and budget recommendations. 

At the state level, outcomes from the six assemblies are intended to feed into updates and implementation of the 10-year plan to dismantle poverty. Leadership turnover has complicated follow-through, but participants across parties have spoken to the benefits of the assembly model as a democratic tool. Staff report that the term “collaborative governance” has not always landed well at the state level, but the language of “collaborative democracy” has helped bridge understanding and widen support. Some state staff now see assemblies not as one-off experiments but as models that can be an ongoing approach in varied communities and contexts.

Assemblies have proven to transform relationships between government staff and community members, making both more effective. “When you think of ‘oh I can just call somebody from this agency or department’ - people don’t typically think that. This model allows for the trust and the relationships to happen. It shelves the ‘us and them’ between government and community and turns it into a ‘we',” reported one agency staff person involved. The familiarity and authentic relationships built between agency staff and community members foster a sense of “we” and constructive problem solving toward a collective purpose. The new connections across labor, community, and government also generated new ideas like a first-in-the-nation program pairing insulation workers with plumbing inspectors. 

Staff at the city and state level report that running a thoughtful assembly process takes more time and more money than most agencies initially assume. The process moves on the timeline of relational work, often requiring 1 to 1.5 years from early planning to final synthesis and policy uptake. But for those willing to take the risk, assemblies save time, money, and political capital in the long run by producing solutions that are more aligned with community priorities and buy-in, and thus more likely to succeed.

Looking ahead, the city, state, and community partners intend to formalize community assemblies so they are not isolated events, but a recurring instrument for co-creation. To do this, they see a need for more robust preparation so more people can participate and stay engaged for longer, and policy labs to work through assembly recommendations with additional stakeholders like businesses, and resources for anchor organizations to convene follow-up workshops that build alignment across agencies. 

Scroll down to continue exploring the parables, and when you are ready, click here to jump to Part III, “Shifts and Strategies towards Collaborative Governance: From Parables to Practice.”

Los Angeles Vision Zero: Repairing Government Harm in Transportation Planning

In the first few years of an initiative to reduce traffic-related deaths to zero, Los Angeles’ transportation agency prioritized learning from, and rebuilding relationships with impacted community members. Their trauma-informed approach recognized traffic-related harm as an opportunity to foster healing, demonstrate accountability, and repair connections with the community. 

Context 

In 2015, the city of Los Angeles adopted Vision Zero, a policy program founded in Sweden in the 1990s, whose primary intention was to reduce traffic-related deaths to zero. Unlike other Vision Zero programs, the approach taken in Los Angeles gave less emphasis to enforcement and instead prioritized popular education and community empowerment. The LA Vision Zero team implemented a Dignity Infused Community Engagement (DICE) framework, “a cross-sector effort that centered community members in the Vision Zero planning process from the beginning; weaving all perspectives and lived experiences into the technical planning process.”14 The LA team used a trauma-informed approach, recognizing that the people most impacted, with whom they sought to work, were those who have experienced a harmful traffic incident. Trauma from traffic-related harm combined with a co-existing general mistrust of government created barriers to building trusting relationships and collaboration with the community. 

Strategies

In the first few years of its Vision Zero initiative, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation's (LADOT) Vision Zero program team took steps to make its staff accessible to the neighborhoods most affected by traffic-related harm. Rather than asking community members to travel across the city to attend programming at the agency's office, LADOT opened a South LA Hub. In this physical location, community members had direct access to the agency and the staff at all times. Additionally, LADOT hired a Street Deployment Team, a group of residents who became the co-creators of all engagement strategies.

To assess the "equity context and set project timelines," the Vision Zero team conducted a social climate analysis survey, a tool for creating a socioeconomic profile of a community. Elements of the Social Climate analysis included: cultural identity, social services needs, environmental factors, infrastructure conditions, and resident oral histories. Staff members of LADOT, along with community members of the Street Team, were deployed to engage residents in the Social Climate analysis along the Avalon Corridor in preparation for a South LA Open House. All members were sent to different sections of the corridor, then met as a large team to review the findings. This analysis served as the foundation for curating community engagement activities that aligned with and respected the community's responses and findings. 

While most planning efforts take place behind cubicles in the city's civic centers, the Vision Zero team decided that the best approach to repair past government harms was to be on the streets and in communities.

In one instance, there was a series of life ending crashes along the same corridor within a week, resulting in significant upheaval as community members expressed their frustrations with the Department and by extension, the Vision Zero team. In response to the unintentional harm caused by the Department, the Vision Zero team decided that the best approach was to facilitate a healing circle with community members from that project area. The Vision Zero team showed up, and for two hours, planners, engineers, and technical consultants sat and just listened to the community's stories, grievances, and visions for the corridor. It was only after community members directed the planning team to take action that the Vision Zero team led a co-creation session for the betterment of the corridor that had taken the lives of three community members the week prior. Understanding the impact of past harms by government institutions on communities, and acknowledging them to ensure they are not replicated, is crucial to integrating bridging into governance practices. 

The Vision Zero team also conducted capacity-building training and language access support to increase equitable access to contracting and planning processes. In the capacity building trainings, CBOs were brought together to review the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) process and receive support and information to ensure they had the opportunity to bid for government contracts alongside more established consulting firms. To remove language barriers, the team created a Transportation Spanish Glossary, a living document that translated over 200 transportation planning terms to Spanish. Project staff and over 32 Spanish-speaking community leaders created the resource to bridge the gap between technical knowledge and lived experience. 

The technical nature of transportation planning and infrastructure improvements can further distance community members' lived experience from the people and processes needed to reduce traffic-related harm. LADOT's Vision Zero team worked to build bridges between the planners and engineers designing the interventions and the community members who had to live with them. Project staff members were put in direct contact with community members, whether through phone banking with the Street Team or sitting beside community members who had lost a loved one as they shared their grievances in the healing circles.

Impact and Lessons 

While the activities deployed by the Vision Zero team were meant to build bridges between project staff and community members, their execution was met with hesitancy and pushback from both community members and other team members within the Department of Transportation. The social climate analysis was met with some pushback from other staff members who did not have the capacity or the interdisciplinary background like staff trained in cultural anthropology and social theory. Most of the pushback received from other department staff was presumably based out of fear; one example was the concern of whether or not the agency could bring candles to a community event where community members were grieving the passing of a couple of local residents in recent car crashes along the corridor. Carrying out the process required additional staff training, and required building the Department's buy-in to the approach, beyond just the Vision Zero process. 

Many community members were hesitant to engage in the activities proposed by the Department due to a lack of trust and confidence in government agencies. Some mistrust was rooted in harm experienced from past activities carried out by the Department of Transportation and other city departments. Said mistrust is hard to pinpoint but rather it is a compounded feeling as a result from the community's critique of over policing in their neighborhoods, lack of capital investments to upgrade asphalt conditions in the community. And other concerns such as poor quality sidewalks, lack of housing, and job opportunities. All out of the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation, but still very true to the lived experience of community members. 

In order to continuously attempt to repair the trust between community members and department staff, Vision Zero had to ensure that relationship building was at the center of all engagement activities. Over time, building new relationships builds trust. While traffic-related crashes continued to occur during the engagement strategies, having a Street Team composed of community members from the corridors where the engagement was localized created rapport with the community at large that had not been present in other projects. The Street Team not only carried out meaningful engagement that informed the planning team's proposed design treatments, but also served as the public face of the Department.

As a result of the engagement strategies carried out by the Vision Zero team, over 1,500 residents attended the South Los Angeles Open House. In preparation for the South Los Angeles Open House, the Vision Zero team carried out a "marathon" of engagement, 30 days of activities along the length of the corridor. This constant presence became an opportunity for community members to stay in contact with the Vision Zero team. While most planning efforts take place behind cubicles in the city's civic centers, the Vision Zero team decided that the best approach to repair past government harms was to be on the streets and in communities. 

Unfortunately, after a few years, and due to staff turnover, Vision Zero did not continue integrating the community engagement strategies described above, leading to the program reverting back to more conventional community engagement strategies used in the field. 

While we can not argue that there was a direct causal relationship between the engagement strategies used by the team at the time and an increase in traffic related crashes, an audit in 2023 showed that traffic deaths increased during the program’s existence.15 It only begs to wonder whether traffic related crashes would have decreased in the long run if the engagement strategies first implemented by the team would have been consistent throughout the life cycle of the Vision Zero program. 

While the activities described above led to better relationship building and attempted to repair the harm, intentionally and unintentionally, caused by government agencies, the Vision Zero team did not have enough time to truly institutionalize a culture of belonging for the community within the program and the agency. The plans that were initiated during the early years of Vision Zero were not implemented. According to an LA Times summary of the 2023 audit, the rise of traffic-related deaths could be attributed to a lack of clear leadership, "conflicts of personality, lack of total buy-in for implementation, disagreements over how the program should be administered.16 

 

The activities shared above speak to how a government agency can reflect upon and then open up its position of power to communities adversely impacted by its programming choices. However, innovative strategies to community engagement are not enough. In addition to testing said strategies,  the agency must identify staff who are willing to champion and advocate for their continued implementation. Additionally, staff capacity needs to be built so the institutional knowledge and innovation can live long after the tenure of staff who developed the strategies. The work highlights the importance of centering responsibility and relationships when aiming to solve long-standing complex problems.

Scroll down to continue exploring the parables, and when you are ready, click here to jump to Part III, “Shifts and Strategies towards Collaborative Governance: From Parables to Practice.”

United to House LA: Codifying Co-Governance for Sustained Progress

Voters in Los Angeles approved a new tax measure to fund affordable housing and homelessness prevention programs, which also established a Community Oversight Committee with required representation of diverse forms of expertise, lived experience, and sectors. The Committee is officially charged with, and resourced to, work with city staff, elected officials, and community stakeholders to guide the development and implementation of the funded programs. 

Context

In 2023, the City of Los Angeles established United to House LA (ULA), an unprecedented, ongoing funding stream dedicated to affordable housing production and homelessness prevention. ULA is the result of a successful 2022 ballot measure that was drafted by a broad grassroots coalition of over 200 organizations which include renters’ rights advocates, community land trusts, homeless service providers, nonprofit affordable housing builders, and labor unions. It establishes a real estate transfer tax on properties sold for over $5 million. The tax revenue funds several key affordable housing programs, including new construction, acquisition and rehabilitation, alternative models for permanent affordable housing, eviction defense/prevention, capacity building for resident-led housing models, and more. This funding stream opens up new possibilities for addressing the city’s housing crisis at scale, with over $944 million in revenue generated as of October 2025. 

From the beginning, the ULA Coalition set out to design a collaborative governance system for the program that ensures that communities most acutely impacted by the housing crisis, as well as frontline organizations working with them, directly participate in the program design and oversight process. The structure, authority, and requirements for future implementation of the fund were written into the ballot measure and codified into law with its passage. The collaborative governance system has set up ULA for success by assembling the full range of stakeholders with the diversity of expertise, community knowledge, and power needed to advance ULA’s goals.

Strategies 

Measure ULA established two community bodies that are new structures for collaborative governance: the Community Oversight Committee (COC) and the Tenant Council. The ballot measure defines the roles and responsibilities of each body, in addition to membership requirements. These details ensure public oversight, equitable representation, meaningful participation, and a defined scope of power that cannot change, regardless of any shifts in staffing or priorities among the city’s elected officials or administration. As one coalition leader explains, the COC structure protects against what organizers have experienced all too often, where “politics drive decisions, instead of the need on the ground.” The campaign to pass the initiative also found that voters were often convinced to support it after learning of the transparency and accountability measures built into how the funds would be used. 

The COC has 15 members, all appointed by the city mayor, with seats designated for individuals with different types of experience and expertise. There are four broad categories of seats: Housing Development, Preservation, & Finance; Renter Protection & Support; Lived Experience & Expertise; and Youth (non-voting/advisory). Under the Lived Experience & Expertise category are tenants who are lower income or have experienced homelessness, a representative of a public sector labor or service union, and a community leader or organizer advocating for high-quality transit near affordable housing and job centers. As an official governing body, the COC holds monthly public meetings which offer an opportunity for general public comments and serve as the space for the group to review program details, discuss emerging challenges, and vote on key decision points.

[T]he work of collaborative governance commonly requires not just advancing policy and systems change; it equally demands defending and sustaining progress that has been won. Overcoming the challenges to ULA will require deep, ongoing collaboration between the city and ULA Coalition, grounded in collaborative governance through the COC.  

Measure ULA gives the Community Oversight Committee specific responsibilities and powers. In addition to conducting needs assessments and evaluating the implementation process, the COC has the authority to develop program guidelines, which ultimately determine the types of development projects and community programs that the ULA revenue will fund. The COC’s authority was intentionally designed to align with the city charter rule that reserves decision-making authority on revenue spending to the city council. This means that ULA’s program budget and program guidelines must ultimately be approved by the city council. Under this collaborative governance structure, the COC has driven an extensive process of developing guidelines for ULA’s inaugural program, Homes for LA. 

The COC structure, along with the massive new resources that ULA developed, created a space for many, including those with varied experience and expertise, institutional power, understanding of community needs, and government systems―to collaboratively negotiate points of disagreement, troubleshoot barriers, and innovate solutions that led to consensus.  Through working group meetings, COC subcommittee and full committee meetings, and many direct conversations between staff and coalition members over several months, everyone was able to raise their concerns and contribute. The housing department’s openness to ongoing partnership and community-driven recommendations has also been key to sustaining collaboration.

The COC’s progress would not have been possible without one other key role established by the ballot measure: that of the inspector gGeneral. Measure ULA required that the COC hire an inspector general who would serve as its lead staff person, separate from LAHD staff. The COC selected Estolano Advisors, a local urban planning and public policy consulting firm, for this position. Estolano was well suited for this role, with robust public sector program experience and a vision of “a world where all communities have what they need to thrive; shape the decisions that affect them; and steward our social, ecological, and economic resources for the benefit of future generations.”17 They provided critical capacity for coordinating and facilitating the many meetings, integrating feedback as drafts evolved between meetings, and ensuring public access to information leading up to COC and city council votes at official public meetings. 

Impact and Lessons 

When it came time for the city council to vote on the COC’s initial proposed expenditure plan and program guidelines, they had already gone through such an extensive process of drafting, negotiation, and vetting led by the COC, that the council approved them unanimously without any changes. With this key milestone, ULA has begun fulfilling its promise to deliver resources that Los Angeles critically needs. In August 2025, LAHD posted the finalized Homes for LA Notice of Funding Availability announcing more than $394 million for affordable housing construction and preservation, of which $154 million is for the alternative models program which requires tenant governance. The COC has also commissioned a preliminary needs assessment, first year program evaluation, and first external audit, in accordance with its official responsibilities. 

 

Through ULA, the city will fund the LA Housing Training Hub, a capacity building program that supports opportunities for low-income tenant households and organizations to explore new models for collective governance, ownership, and building management. The concept of the Training Hub has been part of ULA’s vision from the beginning, with the measure language designating a pool of funding specifically for capacity building. The LA Housing Training Hub will receive approximately $14.9 million over the next four years to build out five key services to support developers and residents through technical assistance, training tools and resources, and outreach and engagement, among other activities. Reflecting an even broader vision and commitment to collaborative governance at scale, the Hub builds capacity for shared decision-making among residents. 

The implementation process has not been without its challenges. Measure ULA has inspired fierce opposition from real estate and anti-tax lobbyists. It also faces new battles from other housing advocates who seek to create loopholes to exempt new market-rate housing construction from the tax. Together, city officials and ULA Coalition members are working to defend against litigation and legislative efforts to invalidate or overhaul Measure ULA. The COC has taken an official stand against these actions, especially in the early stages of implementation when the impacts cannot yet be adequately realized or assessed. 

As this case demonstrates, the work of collaborative governance commonly requires not just advancing policy and systems change; it equally demands defending and sustaining progress that has been won. Overcoming the challenges to ULA will require deep, ongoing collaboration between the city and ULA Coalition, grounded in collaborative governance through the COC. 

ULA has already become a game-changer for LAHD and its ability to respond to the housing affordability and homelessness crises, offering a clear example of the power of collaborative democracy to deliver what communities need. This year, LAHD released an unprecedented amount of funding for affordable and social housing, with the majority of these funds coming from ULA. The COC reports that in its first two years, ULA has kept 11,000 Angelenos housed through rental assistance, accelerated the creation of 10,000 union construction jobs, supported the construction of 800 new affordable homes, and educated over 100,000 renters on their rights. 

Every partner holds a critical role, with each contributing their distinct perspective, expertise, time and energy, institutional and/or community power, and commitment, as ULA develops its programs, while also defending the resources it has secured.

Scroll down to continue exploring the parables, and when you are ready, click here to jump to Part III, “Shifts and Strategies towards Collaborative Governance: From Parables to Practice.”

Collaborative democracy is fundamentally about respectfully engaging in and expanding the diversity of perspectives and experimenting beyond the status quo. This inevitably requires embracing conflict and making mistakes. These efforts are strengthened through relationships and iteration. Staying committed to each other, repairing relationships when necessary, and remaining willing to always come back to the table or drawing board is essential to the process of learning how to collaboratively govern and generate real solutions together. 

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Shifts and Strategies towards Collaborative Governance: From Parables to Practice

Like belonging, collaborative governance is an aspiration that requires long-term commitment and iteration. Creating sustainable and purposeful shifts within governing norms and operating procedures takes time, especially when the goal is to expand the table of collaborators and ensure their buy-in. It must span past election cycles, singular policy campaigns or programs, and even beyond many individuals’ tenures within a community or organization. The work requires building and testing simultaneously, identifying areas of improvement, navigating setbacks, and seizing opportunities for transformation. Also like belonging, collaborative governance is a daily practice, and it can sprout anywhere, even out of a single one-on-one conversation between a government staffer and a community member. 

Within each parable, we see courageous people engaging in collaborative governance as both an aspiration and a practice: trying something new and stepping outside of their comfort zones, making commitments to see and engage with each other differently, and creating both relationships and structures that produce real impacts and progress towards realizing the vision of collaborative governance and belonging. Across the parables, we observe three overarching types of shifts that are critical for effective collaborative governance. These shifts occur in the following realms:

• Relationships: Treating relationship-building, bridging, and repair as governing work.
• Structures: Institutionalizing and resourcing structures for co-creation.
• Processes: Operationalizing shared governance through the design of community engagement processes.

We offer 10 strategies that surfaced in our research as concrete actions to make these shifts. The strategies are different expressions of collaborative governance. We invite you to consider each of the shifts and strategies, adapt and apply what is beneficial in your context, learn from the experience, and share your reflections. 

Treat Relationship-Building, Bridging, and Repair as Governing Work

The first shift in governance centers relationships not as a precursor to “real work,” but as governing work itself. Across the parables, the ability to govern collaboratively depended on building, repairing, and sustaining relationships across differences, roles, and histories of harm. The following three strategies were key to making this shift: 

1. Develop sustained processes that reflect a commitment to relationships. Like the saying goes, relationships move at the speed of trust. And yet, we see many initiatives struggle because they did not give adequate time for intentional relationship building nor adjust the process when relational needs called for it. A sustained relational process allows the community to witness how their input is honored by people in government, and for government staff to witness how the community will stand by them when staff show they are accountable. The Michigan Youth Funding Collaboration shows how participants were at first mistrusting of the process and felt that their input would not contribute meaningfully. Instead of dismissing the concern, the facilitation group decided to pause, lean into transparency about the decision-making process, and invite people still interested in moving forward to reapply. In taking the necessary time to create transparency, adjust their process, and clarify accountability, they were able to move through the relational hiccups and ultimately create a permanent network to advance belonging. 

2. Tend to relational wounds and repair past harm. When people have been harmed and have not had the chance to be heard and responded to, collaboration is stifled. Institutional harm can carry a legacy that lasts generations. Even if current government staff were not responsible for past harms, it is part of an institutional responsibility to be cognizant of the harm done, listen deeply, accept responsibility on behalf of government, and prioritize repair before advancing policy or practice solutions. In tandem, community groups that are engaged in collaborative governance have a responsibility to identify and communicate what harms need to be addressed in order to clear the way for effective relationship building and collaborative governance. Los Angeles Vision Zero offers a strong example of a government team, and community members trying on a different approach by holding healing circles after tragic traffic accidents. Government staff show up to be with people directly harmed, listen for and respond to their immediate needs, recognize how past planning decisions contributed to the harm, and offer opportunities for community members’ dreams of the future to shape plans moving forward. 

3. Create space for bridging diverse experiences and ways of knowing. Collaborative governance relies on bringing together diverse forms of expertise, life experiences, and lenses people use to see the world. For collaborative governance to lead to effective solutions, people with technical and program expertise must be brought into direct relationship with people whose lives are shaped by policy and program decisions. The California Social Housing Design Circles created a space for people who have directly experienced the struggle of housing unaffordability to speak directly to the team responsible for drafting social housing policy recommendations. The workshop facilitators served as a bridge, designing a forum that allowed them to surface implications of participants’ lived experience and ideas for policy design and make these legible to policymakers. They also approached their role with the intention of supporting sustained engagement between the organizations involved in service of broader movement building over the long term, which they recognized as necessary for ultimately manifesting systems change and material benefits for Californians.

Institutionalize Structures for Co-Creation

The second shift toward governing for belonging is structural. Collaborative governance becomes possible only when institutions intentionally redesign their systems to actively redistribute power and embed co-creation into how decisions are made. Across all examples, institutional commitment to inclusion was not symbolic or episodic, it was built directly into policies that determine program design, budgets, decision-making authority, and governance processes. Below are strategies for making this structural shift. 

4. Resource collaborative governance with funding, people, and time. Collaborative governance requires visible and consistent messages of support from leadership, paired with resources that allow for skilled staff with experience, cultural competence and ability to do the work well, and spaciousness with time. Working collaboratively across any scope requires more time, so it is important to account for a slower build up and/or process initiation. But collaborative governance also saves time and money in the long-term because it generates wider and more authentic buy-in and support, better planning decisions, more meaningful community benefits, health and wealth. The Washington Assemblies case demonstrates the resourcing needed: the state distributed resources and authority to six community-based organizations for the purpose of hosting assemblies in spaces where participation was accessible, relevant, and grounded in economically marginalized communities. Staff from the City of Seattle and the State of Washington had time and support to contribute to the assemblies by filling roles as notetakers, and did critical follow up synthesizing notes and sustaining collaboration with partners to implement the assembly recommendations. 

5. Establish standards and practices for transparency and accountability. Building new structures requires clarity of decision-making processes. In absence of shared understanding of the authority community members will have in decision making, resistance and resentment can surface. This means stating clearly (as early as possible) how decisions are made, where community input has authority, and how power is distributed across actors. Without this structural shift, even well-intentioned engagement efforts remain fragile and limited in impact. This structural shift is also essential for sustaining relationships and rebuilding trust. The Michigan Youth Funding Collaboration started without the participants having clarity about the decision-making process, so the facilitators decided it was necessary to pause and make more transparent the process and the rights and responsibilities of participants. They formally stopped the process and provided needed information on how the participants would be involved in decisions about Request for Proposal language, criteria for grant-making decisions, and priorities for distribution of funding. 

6. Formalize the institutional power of community. Writing collaborative governance into law protects these efforts from political turnover and administrative change, ensuring that participation is not discretionary but an ongoing practice and expectation of the institution itself. Without this level of institutional commitment, collaborative governance remains fragile and easily undone. The United to House LA coalition wrote into their ballot initiative details about the Community Oversight Committee’s responsibilities and authority, and the types of experience people on the committee would need to have. They also built for more public oversight by formalizing standards and processes for exchanging information between the COC and the public. This layer of sharing and planning has been key for cultivating public trust and support for the program and securing its future. Other advances towards this commitment could take the form of a shared written agreement, a signed memorandum of understanding (MOU), or a formal contract that outlines commitments held to one another. 

Expand engagement and shared purpose

The third shift toward collaborative governance is operational: it requires changes to how governance and public engagement processes are designed and run. The following strategies illustrate how processes can be designed to be as inclusive as possible, ensure that stakeholders’ participation meaningfully informs their outcomes, and illustrate the texture of collaborative governance design, the parts that participants walk away with recognizing what they experienced that felt differently than past collaborative engagements. 

7. Reach for all by going to where people are and removing barriers to participation. Engaging all requires a concerted effort to reach people who aren’t yet civically engaged and may have obstacles to participation like language barriers, childcare responsibilities, and mistrust of government. It requires taking the time to listen and respond to people across a variety of lived experiences. While public comment forums are a helpful tool in gathering some information, they typically only reach people already civically engaged, and do not allow for a generative exchange that fosters mutual learning and builds trust. The Washington Assemblies reached for all by partnering with organizations with deep relationships in various communities, and facilitated generative exchange by asking all participants to dedicate at least nine hours to the process so they would have time to build shared understanding of the issues, baseline language on the key concepts, and commitment to the process. The Los Angeles Vision Zero street team reached for all by walking busy corridors and surveying residents about the social climate, and inviting them to an open house. 

8. Design multiple routes to engagement that match different capacities and interests. Collective governance recognizes that not all communities experience the invitation to participate equally. Time, language, technical complexity, and historical mistrust shape who engages and how. In response, collaborative efforts must adapt their approaches by translating technical information, compensating participants, and creating culturally responsive formats that reduce exclusion rather than reproduce it. The parables demonstrate the importance of offering multiple pathways for engagement. While assemblies enabled deep collaboration for some, other initiatives used complementary approaches such as surveys, listening sessions, and report-backs that reached those unable or unwilling to participate by other means. Together, these practices reflect a shift from participation as a single event to participation as an intentionally designed ecosystem to one that supports collaborative governance over time.

9. Anchor the process in clear principles, values, and shared understanding. Taking time for participants to agree to shared principles provides a transparent basis for future decisions and priorities. This creates a level of buy-in and agreement on how participants will relate to each other that is essential for navigating conflicts and politics. A wide range of skillsets and experience among participants means that time must be taken to level up and establish a shared understanding of the key concepts and language. In Michigan, the facilitators took time for participants to discuss and agree to principles for belonging and liberatory design mindsets, which were used both to guide how meetings were run and the criteria used to analyze funding program design decisions. 

10. Center the needs and voices of people who have the most at stake. Governing requires gathering input from a wide range of powerful stakeholders, but this should not come at the expense of prioritizing the needs of people who will be most directly impacted. Across the parables, equitable collaboration began with targeted strategies that centered communities with the most at stake. This often meant partnering with "trusted messengers": community-rooted organizations that already held relationships, credibility, and cultural knowledge. For example, outreach for the California Social Housing Design Circles was led by a coalition of tenants associations already deeply rooted in low income communities―the people most in need of expanded and improved affordable housing. The facilitators carefully designed the workshops to allow everyday people to weigh in on key policy ideas by reflecting on their own lived experience and hopes for the future, rather than asking them to review and provide feedback on the implications of technical policy language that can be difficult for anyone to understand. 

These three shifts and 10 strategies underscore that collaborative governance cannot be rushed. But taking time to intentionally plan and then responsively iterate these approaches to collaborative governance can build bridges across differences and disrupt entrenched “us versus them” dynamics, expanding the possibility of a larger “we.” While collaborative governance does not eliminate disagreement or guarantee consensus, it does require institutions to remain in relationship long enough to learn, adapt, and move forward together.

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Closing

If you’ve made it this far with us, thank you for your time, your work, and your perseverance. You are who this paper was written for and inspired by: the builders working to transform structures so they work more, for all. Collaborative governance is one of the most timely expressions of aligning our systems, policies, and processes with true principles of democracy in action. 

While we are in an exceptionally challenging time, facing many expressions of relational and structural othering, it is important for us to remember that despite any illusion of not having a choice, we have the power and agency to take actions in shaping the future we wish to see. Our future is not predetermined. Contrasted with more hierarchical, exclusionary forms of governance that only seek belonging for some, collaborative governance invites us into a more inclusive vision, activated by actions that build stronger relationships and co-create more effective, life supporting structures. We hope the stories, lessons, and reflections offered within this paper contribute ideas and strategies you can use to bring this vision to life. 

Just as moments of crisis can deepen fracture, they can also create openings into something new–an opportunity to build systems and structures rooted in care, belonging, and the material well-being of all. We are thankful to be on this journey with you.

Acknowledgments

The authors of this paper work collectively with government representatives, community organizations, activists, researchers, artists, facilitators, coalitions, and networks. This research responds to questions prompted by collaborators across multiple projects, and reflects insights they've shared from their experiences of engaging in collaborative governance processes. It is also informed by the authors' individual experiences both in and beyond our roles at OBI, in which, at different points (and at times, simultaneously), have placed us on the inside, outside, and as a bridge between government and community. 

The authors of this report thank the following reviewers for their reflections and contributions: Solana Rice, Shanti Singh, Shar Thompson, Shazia Manji, Laura Raymond. Dr. Rashaad Abdhur Rahman, Claudia Menendez, Julia Caplan, Elana Needle, Philippa Rizopolous, Míriam Juan-Torres González, Joshua Clark.

The visuals in this publication are adapted from photographs generously shared by Ryan Howe of the Michigan Afterschool Partnership.

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• 11

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  Front and Centered, People’s Economy Lab, and Statewide Poverty Action Network, Cornerstones of Collaborative Governance for a Just & Equitable Future. (The Just Futures Project, 2023), https://peopleseconomylab.org/collaborative-governance.

• 14

  Los Angeles Vision Zero, "Dignity-Infused Community Engagement: Overview & Approach," Los Angeles Department of Transportation Livable Streets, https://ladotlivablestreets-cms.org/uploads/b51c5f0c09414fb29027afadb70fa813.pdf.

• 15

  KPMG, Vision Zero: Program Independent Evaluation (December 1, 2023), https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/d3/54/bdc16d7846f1a3ad50e1012a39a8/06240035-cao-dot-vision-zero-program-reportfinalrevised.pdf.

• 16

  Ryan Fonseca, "An audit of L.A.’s program to fix deadly streets outlines its many failures," Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2025, https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2025-04-18/an-audit-of-l-a-s-program-to-fix-deadly-streets-outlines-its-many-failures-essential-california.

• 17

  "Home Page," Estolano Advisors, accessed July 17, 2026, https://estolanoadvisors.com/.