Relationship building is a critical aspect of any successful organization or community. However, it is important to remember that building relationships is not a linear process. It takes time, effort, and a willingness to listen and learn from others. Often, we may make assumptions or jump to conclusions about others without fully understanding their perspective. Taking the time to pause, listen, and being open to learning about those we are in relationship with can be powerful tools in building stronger, more meaningful relationships. In this blog post, we'll explore:
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why relationship building is not a one-size-fits-all process
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how to create trust and credibility with the communities you work with
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practical tips and tools for building stronger relationships
Relationship Building is Not Linear
It must be acknowledged that whether intentional or not, historically, relationships between institutions and communities have often been formed in transactionary or exploitative ways. Traditional outreach methods, lack of time and institutional resources, among other factors have put organizations in a sort of deficit when it comes to building relationships grounded in trust, mutuality, and equity. “One-off” dynamics can also be very common, where organizations give a particular community a lot of focus for a specific project or initiative, and then divest from that relationship once the project is completed.
Outreach methods also tend to be based in goals that are more about reaching as many people as possible, versus understanding the diverse circumstances of communities and prioritizing high-quality, sustainable relationships with actual individuals. Each community or person we engage with is unique, with their own set of experiences, needs, and expectations. What works for one community or individual may not work for another. Therefore, it is important to approach each relationship with a unique perspective, taking the time to listen and understand the nuances of each community.
Additionally, relationships are constantly evolving, and what worked in the past may not work in the future. It is important to be open to learning and adapting to changes in order to maintain strong relationships. Sometimes, unexpected issues may arise that require a pause or direction change in the relationship building process in order to address them with accountability.
Ultimately, building relationships requires a willingness to be flexible, patient, and understanding. It takes time to build trust and credibility, and if there is one thing civic and cultural organizations across the board feel a lack of, it’s time. However, investing in the process of relationship building can lead to stronger, more effective partnerships that benefit everyone involved in more meaningful and lasting ways.
Why is it Important to Focus on One Community at a Time
Each community has its own unique needs, priorities, histories, etc. Just like individuals, communities can not be compared to one another nor treated with a cookie cutter relationship building process. It is not “one-size-fits-all.” We must approach each specific community with a unique perspective and recognize the nuances in order to serve, support and grow with them.
Here are 3 reasons why it is important to dedicate your attention to one community at a time.
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Focusing on one community will enable you to go deep and really get to know them. Going broad and trying to engage too many communities at once can lead to superficial encounters and transactional relationships. If you really want to get to know someone, focused time and attention helps. When you go deep, you'll demonstrate your commitment and authentic interest in what is really going on with that community. You'll have more time to listen and really hear what matters to individuals. This depth fosters a relationship grounded in trust, safety, and care, all of which supports community members to offer more honest and useful insights and build more sustainable partnerships.
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The new skills you'll build with one community can be applied in the future with others. If you are just starting out with your first community of interest, it will not be your last. While all teams in our Change Network program start with one community of interest, the point is that they use this time to build the muscles of relationship building so that they can later expand to use their new skills to build relationships with many other communities. This is especially useful if you choose to progressively work with communities that are further removed from your institution and where trust is very low. You'll keep building deeper skills with each new community you work with, and have the tools to continue to hold yourself accountable to those relationships long into the future.
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When you remove barriers to participation for one group, you will likely remove barriers that affect other groups as well. We educate our members on the importance of listening and learning from their community in order to build a concrete Change Plan that is important and impactful to them. We often see Change Plan elements that were inspired by the community of interest but that positively affect many different communities. For example, one participating team listened to Latinx millennials and decided to change their approach to on-site security to be more welcoming of young people. While Latinx millennials certainly benefited from this change, so did young people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as Black and People of Color of other age ranges who typically have negative experiences with security. Another team listened to adults with disabilities and decided to change their hiring criteria, which ultimately made their hiring process and systems more accessible for all. In both of these examples, the changes started with the community of interest but were meaningful to many other groups as well.
This idea of focusing on one community at a time is well-researched and documented in many sectors. Below are a few of our favorite examples borrowed from activism, theory, and policy:
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In urban design, the "Curb-Cut Effect" describes how making the built environment more accessible for people with disabilities often has benefits for other groups. In the early 1970s, disability activists cut ramps into curbs to make it easier for people in wheelchairs to navigate from sidewalks to the street. It was quickly apparent that these "curb cuts" also benefit others—like caregivers with strollers, or workers pushing heavy carts. In this way, change that was initiated by and for one group benefits many. Read This article by Angela Glover for more on the “curb-cut effect.”
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In social movements, Black feminist scholars and activists have long argued that liberating those furthest from power means more opportunity for everyone. You may have heard the phrase "when Black women get free, we all get free." This originates from the 1977 Combahee River Collective Statement, authored by a group of Black lesbian activists, including Barbara Smith, Demita Frazier, and Beverly Smith. As they put it: “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” Learn more in this article by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.
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In policy work, the theory of Targeted Universalism describes practical ways for racial equity to be achieved in complex institutions or cities. Targeted Universalism argues that equity happens not when marginalized groups "catch up" to the most powerful group, but when different groups have distinct, targeted pathways to a shared, universal goal. The targeted pathways you build with a specific community of interest often serve other communities as well. The UC Berkeley Othering and Belonging Institute has a toolkit on Targeted Universalism and this brief, animated explainer, if you want to learn more.
One of our favorite activists, Adrienne Maree Brown, author of Emergent Strategy, emphasizes the importance of targeted universalism in relationship building. She recognizes that different communities may have different needs, but that there are universal principles that can be applied to create more equitable and inclusive communities. This means that while the approaches to addressing inequities may differ depending on the specific community and its needs, the underlying principles remain the same.
Lauren Benetua, our Associate Director of Data & Memberships is also an experienced community organizer, cultural leader and the founding Community Catalyst of the OF/BY/FOR ALL Change Network program. In her roles she has facilitated many workshops and trainings to wide set of organizations. When working with our members she shares, “We know it's hard to choose just one COI. But we find that going deep with one group at a time enables you to do all that you can to connect with new people in meaningful ways. And it will create more opportunities for you to work with more communities in the future. Think of it this way: in order to become of, by, and for all communities in our organizations, we must first learn how to do so one community at a time.
Watch this 2-3 minute video from Lauren on how to describe communities with clarity and specificity and a few simple ways to avoid falling into assumptions and stereotypes:
The OF/BY/FOR ALL Change Network curriculum is deeply inspired and continuously informed by these essential theories of social change that span decades of research, community organizing, social movements, and intellectual thought. We’ve applied these theories and practices to build a program that offers a step by step process with concrete tools to help our members reach their relationship building and community partnership goals. While building equitable relationships and unlearning harmful practices can feel daunting, you don’t need to waste time or resources trying to figure this out on your own or reinvent the wheel.
What May Get Uncovered in the Process?
One aspect of relationship building that is important but can feel challenging is the potential for organizations to learn things they didn’t expect or feel unprepared to hear. In some cases, their community members might share harmful things that have been done, whether intentionally or unintentionally. While it can be difficult to hear these things, it is important to create a space where they can be spoken, heard, and addressed with accountability. This may require a pause in the relationship building process in order to fully unpack these issues and make sure they are tended to with care and humanity. Without addressing these issues, it can be difficult (and perhaps impossible) to move forward and build stronger relationships.
Though surfacing harm is difficult, we encourage organizations to recognize these moments as progress. When community members feel safe enough to share vulnerable things with you, it is a sign that trust exists. Author and activist bell hooks, says “Love is a combination of six ingredients: care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust. I found that a lot of people just felt really confused about what love is, so I said, here, take these six ingredients and as you go about your life, you can ask: the action I'm taking, does it have these six ingredients?” By addressing these issues that arise head-on, we can create a culture of accountability and respect with love as the leading intention.
Creating Trust & Credibility
Our team has compiled 10 Equity and Inclusion Concepts that we introduce to all of our participating Change Network organizations during the onboarding period of their membership, and that they constantly refer to throughout their change making journeys. It’s our way of breaking down the broad and unruly work of making changes toward equity into understandable pieces using shared language. They can support organizations' efforts to build meaningful relationships with communities, especially with communities that may have been excluded from their institution, or institutions like theirs. Remember, we’re specifically talking about relationships that are rooted in trust and mutuality, along with the acknowledgment and possible repair of harm. Additionally, these concepts can support organizations to look for ways to both share and rebalance power so that more communities can feel a true sense of belonging in the spaces they steward. To help our members remember these 10 fundamental concepts, we’ve grouped them into three categories: BUILD, CHECK-IN, and GROW because that is the story of relationships: you build them, check in on them, and grow them.
Here are four of the 10 Equity and Inclusion Concepts that apply specifically to the process of building relationships:
Community First Design
Community First Design is all about turning traditional practice on its head. A model we often see, is one in which organizations usually create programs in a void, without any input from their community and then try to find someone or a particular group of individuals to sell them to. What is created is often informed by assumptions made by organizations of what they THINK a community wants. That can work with some folks, but if they don’t have an existing relationship with the organization, it is unlikely that community members who have not feel welcome in the past will feel or believe that those programs are really for them. A lack of participation by a community can then feed further assumptions about that community that often sound like “Oh those people just aren’t interested in art (or whatever it is you’re offering).” . But in community-first design, we take the opposite approach. We start first by asking “who do we most want to involve specifically” - and then we go outside our institutional frame (both physically and conceptually) to co-create programs and changes to the organization that are rooted in what actually matters most to them.
Curiosity
In order to find out what matters to your community you need to practice curiosity. You must go beyond statistics and stereotypes and learn about them as people, without judgment, and with respect for how they individually move through the world.
Sometimes when it comes to working with marginalized or underrepresented communities, some tend to think of it like grocery shopping. They want some young people in their cart, some Black and brown people, etc. Organizations often think if they can get all those folks into their spaces, then everything will look inclusive, everyone will be happy and they will be attractive to funders.
Grocery store diversity isn’t real inclusion - it’s objectification. When we treat people as objects or dollar signs, we aren’t seeing them as full people. We’re just asking them to hop in our cart to benefit our goals. Most marginalized people are treated this way, and there are rarely any mechanisms for accountability or honest feedback that empower marginalized folks to be true collaborators. While organizations might get people to come to their space once with this approach, it is unlikely that they will return or build trust with the organization and the people who run it. It’s not going to build a more inclusive organization, and in fact, usually exacerbates a dynamic of harm and inequity.
Asset-Based Thinking
Many people are familiar with the concept of needs-based thinking: the idea of seeing communities and potential partners through a lens of what we think they need. “How can I help them fix their problems?” “How can my organization serve the needs of this community?” That thinking can actually undermine the relationships we’re trying to build, and perpetuates stereotypes of marginalized people that they are inherently lacking and don’t have anything to offer or contribute. It is a generous instinct to want to be of service to others, but it can come across to the recipient as arrogant or patronizing, as well as become a manifestation of “savior mentality”. When we do this, we may imply that we have all of the resources and knowledge to magically solve our partners’ problems. We may also be ignoring the reality that everyone has assets to share.
Once we start focusing on what both parties in a relationship can offer they will most likely become excited about connecting more deeply with each other instead of feeling inadequate or ill-equipped. Asset-based thinking empowers everyone to show up to the relationship from a place of wholeness, bringing all resources to the table, and working collaboratively to create things neither group could have ever imagined alone. That builds a foundation for radical partnership.
Radical Partnership
Radical partnership is a sharing of both power and vulnerability. This requires listening to each other more deeply than is typical in a transactional partnership. This can feel stressful, scary even, especially if you are used to being in control or believing you have all of the answers. Many partnerships start with an undercurrent of suspicion, even if it is unconscious. You may feel unsure if you can rely on the other partner to do their part. You may not even understand what their part is! In a radical partnership, it feels different. Instead of starting with suspicion, you start with trust. You keep showing up and trust that your partner will bring something powerful to the table even if you don’t yet understand it, creating something together that is bigger than what either of you imagined. This is a process of rebalancing power and making space for new insights, ideas, and opportunities to emerge. The result is stronger relationships, projects, policies, and spaces that are truly reflective of the diverse partners involved.
Through community-first design, curiosity, and asset-based thinking, we build the environment for radical partnerships to start and to prosper.
Take a moment to reflect on the relationships you’ve built. Where did you engage with community-first design, curiosity, or asset-based thinking? Was there a time when those things were lacking? Have you experienced radical partnership?
Relationships take time and practice; but it’s worth it.
Effective relationship building is a complex process that demands patience, effort, and a willingness to listen and learn. Prioritizing the voices and needs of community members is crucial in creating a safe environment for them to share their experiences, provide feedback, and establish a foundation of trust. By dedicating the time and resources to build strong relationships, we can create positive systemic change that benefits everyone involved and beyond. Whether you are starting out or looking to deepen existing relationships, taking the time to understand the unique perspectives of each community and approaching each relationship with an open mind is critical to success. Remember, building relationships is not a linear process, but the benefits of investing in them are invaluable.