Kaylyn Williams, Senior Consultant, Community Wealth Partners
In moments of chaos, it’s natural for nonprofits to feel uncertain—unsure of what’s next and how to move forward. But uncertainty can also be a powerful catalyst for connection and action. During the COVID-19 pandemic, The Healthy Food Community of Practice doubled down on its efforts to bring nonprofits together and helped them build lasting relationships, collaborate in new ways, and innovate around shared challenges.
Today, with nonprofits facing both immediate funding challenges, rollbacks of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, and the unknowns of the next four years, funders have a similar opportunity to step into the gap by convening grantee partners to strengthen collective action.
Innovations Sparked from the Healthy Food Community of Practice
The Healthy Food Community of Practice was a group of 50 national and regional organizations that came together to connect, learn, share resources, and take collective action in support of local communities as they reimagined and rebuilt their food systems to thrive.
In 2020, just as the community was set to begin convening, the context for which they were initially created shifted in several meaningful and intersecting ways:
- The Covid -19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill as people faced deep isolation in both their personal and professional lives,
- The United States was grappling with a racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd, and
- There was uncertainty about the federal and local response as rates of food insecurity rose.
Over the lifetime of the Healthy Food Community of Practice, participating members found strength in the community. This space provided a rare opportunity to connect with peers and navigate the challenging time together. Through deep relationships, new partnerships, and shared learning, organizations gained insights and built connections they would not have otherwise developed. Some of the innovations that spurred through their work together included:
- Research to Understand the Impact of Shifts in Benefits Enrollment: Shutdown orders during the pandemic made it impossible for individuals to enroll for SNAP and other benefits in person. At the same time, the number of people eligible for SNAP and other benefits increased as unemployment rates rose during the start of the pandemic. In response to this challenge, a subset of the community of practice came together to conduct research on the impact of temporary changes to benefits enrollment processes and recommendations for what should endure beyond the pandemic. Their recommendations included flexibility around virtual approaches to enrollment, emphasis on partnerships, and increased inclusivity through accommodations and supports. Doing this research together helped community members make meaning of the changes that were happening and anticipate how these changes could impact their organizations and the communities they serve.
- A Proposed Community Framework for Nutrition Education: The pandemic and racial reckoning highlighted the lack of cultural competence and inclusion in program delivery of nutrition education. In response, a group of community members worked together to create a proposed framework for nutrition education. The framework can be used by institutions to re-examine, re-design, and re-imagine their nutrition education program models and evaluations to be more culturally competent and inclusive. The community members surmised that the field could better holistically address individual and community nutrition and dietary needs by leveraging a broader, interdisciplinary framework; this type of framework was identified as a resource gap for institutions implementing programs and is now accessible to organizations doing this work.
- Guidance for working with Tribal Communities: At the start of the pandemic, participants that worked with tribal communities noticed an outpouring of interest from other organizations wishing to partner with tribal communities after the pandemic hit these communities especially hard. While these organizations had good intentions, many did not have prior experience partnering with tribal communities or knowledge and cultural competence required to partner well. To address this, a subset of community members convened a group of tribal leaders representing different tribes to inform a list of recommendations and resources for organizations interested in partnering with tribal communities. The group shared a resource titled Interested in working with Tribal communities? Consider these 6 things first with interested organizations to help pave the way for stronger partnerships going forward.
The collective approach and the commitment to centering the voice of those most impacted in these efforts led to resources and innovations that had more reach and credibility than any one person or organization could have created alone.
Recommendations for Funders When Supporting Connection and Collaboration
The success of the Healthy Food Community of Practice stemmed from both nonprofits and the foundation’s willingness to step into uncertainty and move the field forward. In the chaos of 2020, nonprofits could have easily retreated in fear and isolation—but instead, they built lasting relationships and took action together.
Today, as nonprofits face urgent funding challenges and the uncertainty of the next four years, there is both an opportunity and a pressing need for funders to invest in convening their partners. From the Healthy Food Community of Practice and other collaboratives, we’ve learned several key recommendations on how to convene well—lessons that can help funders strengthen the collective power of their networks in uncertain times.
Prioritize Relationships
In collaborative work, it’s common to rush into action—but years of experience have shown us that building trusting relationships is the essential foundation for any meaningful action. The Healthy Food Community of Practice prioritized relationship building throughout the four years. Through deep relationships, community members gained a clearer understanding of how to leverage each other’s strengths. They found solace in the collective—forming supports that not only sustained their work but also allowed them to lean on one another to fill the many existing gaps. This feels all the more relevant in the current context, where chaos is often wielded as a tool to isolate people and their work.
Prioritize Community Ownership
The Healthy Food Community of Practice was designed and facilitated in deep partnership with community members—a critical factor in the community’s success. Participating organizations and members had a direct stake in both the successes and challenges of the community.
Designing with community members can take many forms. We at Community Wealth Partners often engage in a collaborative design process that includes interviews, design sessions, and surveys with potential members to better understand their hopes, needs, and desires for the community.
During the Healthy Food Community of Practice, this commitment to shared leadership continued throughout the four-year community. A rotating advisory group of around 10 members, representing a diversity of participating organizations, played a critical role in the community’s evolution. These members helped shape convening design, made decisions around speakers and learning topics, and co-facilitated virtual and in-person gatherings.
For funders, this model offers an important lesson: providing funding does not need to equate to holding decisionmaking power. Trusting community members as the decision-makers and co-creators leads to stronger, more sustainable outcomes.
Provide Sufficient Resources and Time
Relationships and collective action require time, intention, and capacity to do well. Funders interested in bringing together nonprofits should consider the resources needed to support the successful engagement of their partners. This could include investing in external facilitation, providing backbone support, and offering capacity-building opportunities for nonprofit leaders.
The time it takes to authentically build relationships and translate them into shared action should not be underestimated. There is often an expectation that simply bringing people into a room will spark collaboration—but that is rarely the case. Collective action requires thoughtful facilitation, consistent relationship-building, and a commitment to creating spaces where people feel valued, ideas are heard, and action can take root.
Be Open and Flexible to Emergent Outcomes
The outcomes of this type of work may not look or feel the same as traditional nonprofit program outcomes. Funders engaging in this type of investment should be open to emergent outcomes and outcomes that speak to the relationships built. It is through these relationships that innovation is sparked. The community of practice began with a broad goal around equitable access to food but moved from breadth to depth when it aligned on a more specific focus of prioritizing BIPOC communities and then created a logic model with specific outcomes connected to that goal.
The Healthy Food Community of Practice demonstrates the power of connection in challenging times—showing that when organizations come together, they can navigate uncertainty with greater strength and collective impact. We encourage funders to lean into this moment, investing not only in individual organizations but in the connections that help them thrive together.