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Creating and Maintaining a Coalition or Partnership:


Tool: Including Diverse Participants

Adapted from the Healthy Communities Massachusetts Newsletter, March/April 2002, produced by
AHEC/Community Partners.

Effective community collaborations must identify the diversity of the community (racial, ethnic, gender, class, etc.) and find ways to celebrate this diversity. Effective coalition action requires engaging and understanding the whole community.

Collaborations often declare that their goals include:
  • Celebrating the diversity within a community,
  • Being inclusive of all members of the community,
  • Encouraging the participation of all the sectors in a community.

Yet many collaborations struggle to bring this diversity into their midst. Although they declare themselves to be open to all members of the community, in practice they represent the majority, the formal structure, and established power brokers, rather than the community at large.

For other collaborations, the issue of diversity and inclusivity may not be high on their priority list, but may be brought to them by members of sub-groups in the community who feel excluded.

The Inclusivity Checklist developed by Beth Rosenthal (1997) is an instrument that assists collaboration members in analyzing the issues of inclusivity and diversity across a wide range of their collaboration activities. The easiest and most obvious way to gauge your group's success in this area is to look around a room at a collaboration or a steering committee meeting. Is the diversity of the community represented in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, age, etc.?
Inclusivity Checklist
by Beth Rosenthal, M.S
The tool can also be found in From the Ground Up! A Workbook on Coalition Building & Community

Instructions: Use this Inclusivity Checklist to measure how prepared your coalition is for drawing strength from diversity, and to identify areas for improvement. Place a check mark in the box next to each statement that applies to your group. If you cannot put a check in the box, this may indicate an area for change.

____ The leadership of our coalition is multiracial and multicultural.
____ We make special efforts to cultivate new leaders, particularly women and people of color.
____ Our mission, operations and products reflect the contributions of diverse cultural and social groups.
____ We are committed to fighting social oppression within the coalition and in our work with the community.
____ Members of diverse cultural and social groups are full participants in all aspects of our coalition's work.
____ Meetings are not dominated by speakers from any one group.
____ All segments of our community are represented in decision making.
____ There is sensitivity and awareness regarding different religious and cultural holidays, customs, recreation and food preferences.
____ We communicate clearly, and people of different cultures feel comfortable sharing their opinions and participating in meetings.
____ We prohibit the use of stereotypes and prejudicial comments.
____ Ethnic, racial and sexual slurs or jokes are not welcome.


If the assessment indicates that, although the coalition has declared itself to be inclusive, it is falling short on that goal, there are many steps that can be taken. One obvious way to proceed is to commit resources to increasing the engagement of various community groups with the coalition. We have seen four very effective ways for this to happen:
  • Provide mini-grants to community groups
  • Hire community outreach workers from the community you wish to engage
  • Provide a community organizer to the community
  • Develop leadership training programs for community leaders