The Vision Module includes guidance, prompts, tips, and resources for the following CNA components.
Component
Objective
Characterizing your community’s demographics, and crafting a compelling story of your community’s experience and aspirations.
Identifying racial equity issues in your community and how they could be exacerbated by climate change, and exploring your organization’s commitment to racial equity.
Identifying key partners and stakeholders representing and/or serving the community, including both existing partners and new partnerships that could be cultivated.
Understanding existing community priorities for social equity and climate resilience based on past and ongoing community engagement efforts.
Before getting started, first gather any existing community needs assessments or related plans and documents, including those created by partner organizations serving the same community, that can serve as a quick reference for, or be updated through, this CNA development process.
Identify your community.
It is important to note that a “community” can be defined in many ways, such as a specific neighborhood, population segment, or a stakeholder group – or a combination of these factors. For example, a community can be defined as a specific neighborhood and all of its residents, low-income youth or people experiencing homelessness in a specific city, or non-English speaking populations in a specific region. Regardless of the scale of your community, it’s important to be specific in order to create an actionable plan that can lead to tangible outcomes.
If you do not have a particular community in mind, consider the following questions:
- Who are the community members that you engage and/or serve through your organization?
- If you or your organization is involved in advocacy work, who do you represent?
- What issue area are you uniquely positioned to tackle?
- If you work with a specific place-based community, are there any particular population segments you serve?
- What community, or communities, do you identify with based on where you live, your background, and/or lived experiences?
First, provide a brief overview of your community.
Community Overview
Community Name
Is there a name for your community?
Geographic Scope
Indicate the geographic scope of your community: neighborhood, city, county, or region.
Population Group
Indicate the specific population group(s) that your CNA will focus on, if any.
Notes
Jot down any additional information about your community that comes to mind.
Craft your community’s story.
Communities are complex, dynamic, and impossible to define solely through numbers. While data points can reveal some information about your community, stories can be used to create a more complete and accurate portrayal of your community’s shared experiences, values, and conditions.
Your community’s story can stitch together the personal experiences of individual community members to capture the collective experiences that unite your community.
Before crafting your community’s story, consider the following questions:
- Audience
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- Who is your intended audience?
- How would you tell your story to members of your community?
- How would you tell your story to those outside of your community?
- How do you want your audience to feel after reading your story?
- How is your personal story connected to the story of your community?
- Impact
- What is the most important message that you want to convey?
- What kind of action do you want to motivate?
- How can your community’s story mobilize community members and/or engage potential funders to advance social equity and climate resilience?
Next, to describe the people and plot that make up your community story, consider the following prompts:
- How would you describe your community’s culture and values?
- What does your community celebrate and find joy in?
- What commonalities do you see in the stories you’ve heard from community members?
- How does the physical environment and the place in which your community is located create a sense of belonging for community members?
- Are there any major events that brought your community together?
- What are some misconceptions that people have about your community for which you’d like to set the record straight? What are some community assets that are overlooked or criticized by people outside of your community?
- What stories might inadvertently harm members of the community if shared? How can you share stories that may involve painful histories in ways that uplift and build up?
A good story can create a memorable experience for your audience and inspire hope, motivate action, and drive meaningful change. The art of storytelling is exactly that – an art; one that does not follow a set formula and instead requires creativity and practice.
As you start to craft your community’s story, explore different methods like:
- Imagining how you might respond, without any preparation, to someone asking about your community’s story; then recording your on-the-spot verbal story that can be transcribed by using a speech-to-text tool;
- Writing the key points you want to get across in your community’s story on sticky notes and mixing up the order to see what kind of narrative arc you want to create; or
- Finding an existing community story that you find compelling and modifying it to tell your community’s unique story.
Once you complete a first draft of your community’s story, share your story with trusted colleagues and partners and ask for their feedback. Since different people like different types of stories, try to get feedback from multiple perspectives before making changes.
- How did the story make them feel? What did they see as the story’s core message?
- Did they find the story engaging or did they lose interest partway?
- Which parts of the story were compelling or, on the other hand, distracting?
Community Story Narrative
First Draft
Feedback Received
When your next draft is ready, share it with members of your community to see if it resonates with them. This is a particularly important step as your community’s story should speak to the collective experience of community members.
Consider any translations and accommodations that may be needed to make the story more accessible.
Community Story Narrative
Second Draft
Feedback Received
Just like your community, your community’s story is ever-evolving. This section is envisioned to be revisited throughout the CNA development process.
Community Story Narrative
Third Draft
Ideas to Consider when Finalizing
Identify your community’s attributes.
This section includes key types of community attributes. Additional rows have been provided in each table as you may be interested in capturing additional community attributes. On the other hand, depending on how you define your community, some of these attributes may not be applicable.
First, gather locational data for your community.
To identify your community’s census tracts, there are two common approaches:
- Use Google to see if the city or planning department—or other neighborhood organization—has already established a “standard” definition of the neighborhood or community in a community profile or other report.
- Choose your own tracts, by using the California Hard-to-Count Index Interactive Map.
Place
Native Land(s)
Indicate the sovereign territory or Native land in which your community is located.
Resource: Native Land Map
City
What city is your community located in?
County
What county is your community located in?
Census Tract(s)
Identify your community’s census tract(s).
Resource: Search by Address or on Map
Next, provide demographic data for your community based on existing information you or your organization compiled, or by drawing from data available through other sources.
A key data source is the American Community Survey, commonly referred to as census data. Census tracts are often used in planning to characterize neighborhoods. While there is an imperfect correlation between the boundaries of a community and of census tracts, because ACS/Census data are aggregated at the tract level, tracts are a convenient unit of analysis.
To download ACS data, use the U.S. Census Bureau’s tool for exploring census data:
- Click on “Advanced Search” to view the tables.
- Click on “Geographies” then “Tract.” Select the state, county, and census tract(s) for the data you want to analyze.
- Select the table(s) and map(s) to view ACS data for the census tracts you selected. The tables and maps available will be split up by topic area, demographic group, or both.
People
Data Source
Indicate the source of demographic data (e.g. 2020 U.S. Census)
Population Size
Race & Ethnicity
Median Age
Genders
Languages Spoken at Home
Disabled Population
Education Attainment
Median Household Income
Poverty Rate
Children under 18 in Poverty
Homeownership Rate
Renter Costs
Residents Without Health Insurance
Employment Rate
Racial equity is not only a commitment; it is a continuous practice of transforming behaviors, institutions and systems that disproportionately harm people of color. Equity means increasing access to power, redistributing and providing additional resources, and eliminating barriers to opportunity in order to empower low-income communities of color to thrive and reach full potential.
A racial equity approach recognizes that color blindness preserves the status quo and its systemic barriers to equity. Rather, by utilizing a race-conscious approach that shines light on complexities and anticipates the challenges ahead can one develop a truly transformative agenda for change. It is important to keep in mind that racial equity impacts intersect across gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, immigration status and other identities.
The process of evaluating racial equity – and taking meaningful action based on evaluation findings – is an ongoing endeavor and something that cannot be rushed. As such, this section is intended to serve as a starting point for a deeper racial equity evaluation. While this section is intentionally focused on racial equity, this process can also be adapted to evaluate social equity more broadly.
Before you begin, it is important to note that your own implicit biases can influence evaluation results. To minimize potential “researcher biases,” consider the following:
- If you do not have a clear understanding of what racial equity means, first spend some time reviewing a few resources such as The Greenlining Institute’s Racial Equity Toolkit or Making Equity Real in Research Guide (see page 18 for guiding questions for equitable research).
- Consider your attitude towards quantitative data compared to qualitative data (e.g., information gathered through interviews and stories). Do you trust or value one more than the other? What makes data untrustworthy or unreliable to you? How might different types of data resonate with different people? How can you leverage both quantitative and qualitative data to create a more comprehensive understanding of your community’s racial equity issues?
- It is important to recognize that the research field itself – including the process in which research topics are selected, how research methodology is designed, and who conducts the research – can be affected by researcher biases and result in gaps in research and data.
- Disaggregating data by race and other demographic characteristics can reveal the severity and salience of inequalities.
- Throughout the Racial Equity Evaluation process, make note of research gaps and ways in which these gaps could be filled through community-based participatory research.
- Consider the privileges you have (or lack) based on your race, ethnicity, age, gender, education level, income level, family background, and other factors that could lead to researcher biases.
Evaluate your community’s racial equity issues.
First, take a moment to think about what you understand to be your community’s racial equity issues. This could include any identity-related disparities in power, access to opportunity, and even stories and perspectives that are considered by others to be valid truths based on their own lived experience. List these issues and organize them by priority. Consider the quantitative and qualitative evidence of each issue:
- Have you experienced or witnessed the issue firsthand?
- Does it stem from a community member’s own lived experience?
- How is it supported by research and data (and if it isn’t, what additional research is needed)?
- How pervasive is the issue at hand?
Racial Equity Issue
Quantitative Evidence
Qualitative Evidence
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Consider who is being impacted by the racial equity issues you identified. Have your understanding of these issues been informed by direct engagement with impacted community members? If not, make note of the population group(s) that need to be engaged.
Next, reflect upon your Community Profile and identify who you see as the most marginalized, disenfranchised, and/or underrepresented population groups in your community. Consider the following questions and continue to iterate upon the original list you created.
- Does your list capture the racial equity issues that different marginalized populations face?
- How might different population groups prioritize the issues you identified?
Finally, consider how the racial equity issues you identified could be exacerbated, or worsened, by the impacts of climate change. As part of this evaluation, also consider how racial inequities and disparities could create barriers for community members to adapt and build resilience to climate change impacts. Draw from your current understanding of climate impacts facing your community (note: this section will need to be revisited after completing component #6: Climate Equity Analysis).
If you do not have a general understanding of the key climate impacts facing your community, we recommend reviewing your regional report from California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment. Each regional report provides a summary of key climate impacts and adaptation solutions, recognizing that the vast majority of adaptation planning and implementation will happen at local and regional scales. Note that not all climate impacts listed in the table below may be applicable or of high priority in your region or for your community.
Climate Impacts
Exacerbation of Racial Equity Issue #1
Air Quality:
Biodiversity and Habitat:
Drought:
Energy:
Extreme Heat:
Extreme Weather Events:
Flooding:
Food Systems:
Public Health:
Sea Level Rise and Coastal Degradation:
Transportation:
Water Quality/Supply:
Wildfire:
Similar to the Community Profile component, this section is also intended to be revisited and updated throughout the CNA development process. This is particularly important if you or your organization has not conducted robust, inclusive community engagement to understand your community’s racial equity issues.
Helpful Resources:
- Making Equity Real in Research Guide
- California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessments – Regional Reports
- Equity Assessment Tool – Zero Cities Project
- Why Disaggregating Data by Race is Important for Racial Equity
Evaluate how equity is embedded in your organization.
Now that you have a deeper understanding of your community’s most marginalized populations and the racial equity issues they face, turn your attention to your organization. Embedding equity in the core purpose and operations of your organization is a critical early step towards advancing racial and social equity. An organization’s commitment to equity is one that should be explicitly stated instead of leaving room for interpretation.
The first step in this process is to reflect upon your organization’s mission, vision, and values and to evaluate the racial and ethnic composition of your organization. As you begin this process, consider reaching out to Admin or HR staff as a partner.
Organizational Purpose
Mission:
Vision:
Values:
Goals:
Objectives:
Theory of Change:
Racial & Ethnic Composition
Board Members:
Staff:
Volunteers:
Review the information you gathered about your organization’s purpose and composition and consider the following questions:
- How is justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion part of your organization’s purpose?
- Is racial equity explicitly included?
- With consideration to the racial equity issues you identified, as well as to how these issues could be exacerbated by climate change, what is and is not within your organization’s scope to address?
- Is your organization representative of the community you serve? How does this differ between board members, staff, and volunteers?
Next, identify actions that could be taken to embed equity in your organization, such as changes that could be made to:
- Your organization’s mission, vision, and values,
- Recruitment and hiring procedures,
- Program development and implementation protocols, and/or
- Other norms, standards, procedures, and policies.
Additionally, consider the level of difficulty of implementing each action, as well as staff at your organization who should be engaged in the process.
Action
Level of Difficulty
Staff to Engage
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3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Embedding equity in your organization is a process that requires leadership, commitment, and time. Consider opportunities to continue making progress towards the actions you identified, both during and after the CNA development process.
Helpful Resources:
Identify and assess existing collaborators and allies.
First, consider the organizations, agencies, and stakeholder groups that you trust and regularly collaborate and interact with. These should include organizations that align with your mission and share your vision and goals for your community.
Collaborators: Organizations, agencies, and stakeholder groups that you regularly collaborate with on local projects and initiatives serving your community.
Organization
Key Contact
Ongoing & Past Collaboration
Allies: Organizations, agencies, and stakeholder groups that are supportive of your efforts and are engaged more strategically or for specific types of initiatives.
Organization
Key Contact
Ongoing & Past Collaboration
Next, consider what each collaborator and ally brings to your partnership. If you are unsure, reach out to your key contacts to get more information.
Organization
Expertise
Resources
Example:
Renewable energy, policy advocacy
Volunteers, meeting space, supplies
Relationships / Constituency
Information (Capture)
Information (Dissemination)
CPUC, labor unions, local university, CBOS
Legislation, CPUC proceedings
Monthly newsletter
Partnerships are most successful when they are mutually beneficial and best leverage each partner’s assets towards shared goals.
As you work through this exercise, consider opportunities to deepen existing partnerships by better leveraging your partners’ assets and the value that your organization brings to each of your partners.
Helpful Resources:
- The Partnering Toolbook
- Kumu (mapping tool)
Evaluate gaps and identify new potential partnerships.
Based on the findings from 3.1, consider any gaps in expertise, resources, relationships, and/or information that could be addressed by forming new partnerships.
As you identify potential partners, consider local and regional nonprofits, universities and research institutions, Tribes and Native-led organizations, government agencies, utilities, and businesses.
Gap
Potential Partner(s)
Expertise
Resources
Relationships
Information (Capture)
Information (Dissemination)
Based on the findings from 3.1, consider any gaps in expertise, resources, relationships, and/or information that could be addressed by forming new partnerships.
As you identify potential partners, consider local and regional nonprofits, universities and research institutions, Tribes and Native-led organizations, government agencies, utilities, and businesses.
Initiative/Idea
New Partners to Engage
Value Proposition
Continue adding to this list as new ideas emerge and new initiatives are designed and come to fruition. Later on in the CNA development process, additional guidance and support will be provided to assist you in engaging and forming new partnerships.
Helpful Resource:
Identify strategies to address barriers to successful partnerships.
For each of the barriers listed below, indicate examples of how it could affect your partnerships with existing collaborators and allies, as well as institutional partners and new potential partners. Then brainstorm some ideas for potential strategies that could help to address key barriers.
Barrier
Key Questions
Potential Strategies
Turf and Competition
Who can you include that would ease turf issues among potential partners and within the community? How might you build greater trust and respect among partners? How might you ensure mutual benefit?
Bad History
What has happened in the community previously (or in prior collaborative efforts) that makes it harder for partners to work together successfully in a new effort? How can bad feelings and mistrust be resolved?
Dominance by Professionals
How do you encourage “non-professional” partners, including those most affected by the issues, to see their unique contribution and agree to participate in planning and decision making?
Poor Links to the Community
How could the group’s members increase their connectedness to the community most affected by the issue? Who and in what activities can they engage to improve local ties?
Minimal Organizational Capacity
How will the collaborative partnership’s organizational capacity be increased? What skills and time do members need to create a more efficient and effective partnership?
Funding (Too Much or Too Little)
What strategies are being used to financially sustain the effort and are there more effective ones? How can we avoid having the opportunity for funding, such as a new grant, tear apart working relationships?
Failure to Provide and Create Leadership
How can new members be encouraged to step up as leaders within the collaborative partnership? How can leadership skills and opportunities be cultivated among unconventional or overlooked candidates?
The Costs Outweigh the Benefits
How can we reduce the costs or increase the benefits of participation in the project by partners and community members? What barriers can be eliminated or overcome?
Helpful Resources:
Compile existing community input.
The first step is to compile input gathered through past community engagement activities, such as from community meetings, public workshops, interviews, surveys, and more. For each community engagement activity, include details about the activity’s purpose, format, geographic scope, and key topics addressed. You can also scan existing organizations to see what needs the community is already responding to. Include additional information about when the activity was conducted, who participated, and any resources that will be helpful to reference throughout the CNA development process, such as links to agendas, results, or outcome summaries.
Additionally, consider partners and other organizations that conduct activities to engage your community and reach out to request the above-mentioned information about their community engagement activities.
Activity Details
Date(s)
Participation
Resources
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Next, compare the demographics of your participants to the demographics of your community, particularly the marginalized population groups you identified as part of your racial equity evaluation. Identify gaps in participation and stakeholder input to inform future CNA development steps, as well as to clearly indicate whose input is informing the next section. Identify barriers to participation facing those who have not participated, and concrete strategies that could overcome these barriers in future rounds of engagement.
Draft your community’s vision for social equity and climate resilience.
Now that you’ve compiled existing community input, review the input that community members have provided to identify community needs and priorities and explore their connections to social equity and climate resilience.
Consider the following questions for each community priority you identify:
- Who are the constituents and stakeholders expressing this priority?
- Is it a common priority for the whole community or for specific segments of the community?
- How would addressing this priority advance social equity objectives?
- How would addressing this priority help communities build resilience to climate change impacts?
- How does this priority connect to other priorities identified? On the other hand, does the advancement of this priority create barriers for the advancement of other priorities?
Community Need/Priority
Source(s)
Social Equity Connection
Climate Resilience Connection
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2.
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5.
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10.
Based on the community needs and priorities you identify, begin drafting your community’s vision for social equity and climate resilience. Consider the following questions:
- What are the priorities that your community identified telling you about the changes they want to see, the type of environment they want to live in, and the future they want to create?
- Are there any commonalities or trends across community needs and priorities?
- What would your community look like if all of your community’s needs and priorities were fully met and advanced?
Helpful Resources:
Assess your organization’s community engagement approach.
Community engagement can be seen on a spectrum and, as noted in Movement Strategy Center’s The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership:
The key to closing equity gaps and resolving climate vulnerability is direct participation by impacted communities in the development and implementation of solutions and policy decisions that directly impact them. This level of participation can unleash much needed capacity, but also requires initial capacity investments across multiple sectors to strengthen our local democracies through systems changes and culture shifts.
With the exception of marginalization (a zero on the spectrum), each of the steps along the spectrum are essential for building capacity for community collaboration and governance. Communities must be informed, consulted, and involved; but through deeper collaboration we can unleash unprecedented capacity to develop and implement the solutions to today’s biggest crises in our urban centers. To achieve racial equity and environmental justice, we must build from a culture of collaboration to a culture of whole governance, in which decisions are driven by the common good. Whole governance and community ownership are needed to break the cycle of perpetual advocacy for basic needs that many communities find themselves in. Developmental stages allow us to recognize where we are at, and set goals for where we can go together through conscious and collective practice, so key to transforming systems.
This section is focused on assessing your organization’s community engagement efforts to then set goals for advancing your efforts along the spectrum toward community ownership. Before you get started, review The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership.
First, reflect on the community engagement activities identified in section 4.1 and indicate where each activity falls on the spectrum.
Ignore
Inform
Consult
Involve
Collaborate
Defer To
Next, assess how your organization approaches community engagement and identify the next development stage to focus on to deepen community participation. Assess your organization’s current capacity, opportunities to build capacity, and initial steps that could be taken when planning your next community engagement activity.
Organizational Assessment on Community Engagement to Ownership Spectrum
Current Stage:
Indicate the stage of your organization’s typical community engagement activities: Ignore, Inform, Consult, Involve, Collaborate, or Defer To.
Goal Stage:
Indicate the next stage of the community engagement to ownership spectrum. For example, if your organization’s current stage is Involve, put Collaborate here.
Existing Capacity:
Describe your organization’s existing capacity, skills, and/or resources that can support your organization in advancing to the goal stage.
Training Needs:
Describe any training, mentorship, and/or technical assistance needed to advance your organization to the goal stage.
Resource Needs:
Describe any resources, such as funding, equipment, materials, and/or software needed to advance your organization to the goal stage.
Other Needs:
Describe any other needs, such as to build capacity, obtain buy-in from leadership.
Initial Steps to Plan for Next Community Engagement Activity:
Outline early planning steps that could be taken to advance your next community engagement activity to the goal stage
Potential Partners:
Create a list of organizations that you could partner with on your next community engagement activity.
Helpful Resource: