Recently, our FSG colleagues shared five practices for community engagement that lead to more equitable outcomes. These practices include: (1) clarifying your ‘why,’ i.e., your reason for community engagement; (2) defining your ‘community’; (3) connecting the dots internally between engagement efforts with the same community; (4) understanding and reckoning with history; and (5) being ready to change existing power dynamics. That final practice of proactively engaging with a mindset and approach that shifts and creates power—i.e., the ability to influence beliefs, behavior, and actions of individuals, a process, or an organization—is one of the most authentic ways to engage with communities.

Envision a scale with two sides depicting the power held by communities on one side and the power held by a company on the other. Currently, in most corporate-community relationships, that scale is grossly imbalanced to the side of the company. Balancing the scale and increasing equity (defined as just and fair inclusion into a society in which all can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential) requires the transferring and building of power by those who currently hold it to those who do not.

Based on our work with companies looking to advance equity through direct community engagement, we are sharing five lessons for how corporations can shift power as they develop and navigate relationships with communities in order to create sustainable social change and to move us to a world where life outcomes are not predicted by an individual’s or group’s identity.

  1. Consistently and frequently engage with communities, moving from transactional to transformational relationships
  2. Give community organizations and stakeholders a seat at the table
  3. Value and prioritize communities’ lived experience as part of data-driven decision-making
  4. Listen actively and create spaces and mechanisms for feedback, transparency, and accountability
  5. Co-create solutions with communities rather than for communities

Read the full article about corporate community engagement by Rifat Mursalin and Nikhil Bumb at FSG.