Lasting community change takes more than funding. Drawing on nearly ten years of work with Mississippi Communities United for Prosperity, this post explains how community power, intergenerational leadership, partnerships, and access to data help communities continue organizing and advocating after a grant ends. Funders and nonprofits can use these four lessons to strengthen long-term community capacity.
Funders want to know whether their investments will last. Community organizations want to know how they’ll keep doing the work when funding ends. But nearly ten years after an investment in community leadership in rural Mississippi, we’re asking a different question: What actually needs to last for community change to continue?
That question was central to our recent webinar, Ten Years Later: What It Takes to Build Lasting Community Change, where we revisited an initiative that Community Science and Mississippi Communities United for Prosperity (MCUP) launched nearly a decade ago with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Through community leadership institutes, youth and adults developed skills to understand systems, use data, organize, and advocate for change.
We brought together Romona Taylor Williams, MCUP’s Chief Executive Officer and longtime community development leader; Mersie F. Watkins, who joined MCUP’s youth programming at age 12 and now contributes to its organizing and research; and Brandi Gilbert, Community Science Managing Director, who was involved in the original initiative.
Our conversation revealed more than what happened to a program after its funding ended. It highlighted what communities need to keep advancing change as issues, strategies, and funding evolve. Four lessons stood out.
1. Build community power, not just programs.
What if the most valuable outcome of a grant isn’t the program it funded, but the community’s ability to take on the next challenge?
MCUP’s work offers a compelling example. Over the years, the organization has addressed flooding, environmental sustainability, lead exposure, and other concerns. The issues have evolved, but the underlying work of building residents’ capacity to understand systems, organize, and advocate has remained central.
As we reflected during the webinar, power building is the muscle of community change. Once communities develop the skills, relationships, and confidence to influence decisions, they can apply that capacity to different challenges. This also makes it possible to pivot when new needs emerge without losing sight of the organization’s purpose.
“We don’t chase dollars, we chase justice.”
— Romona Taylor Williams
The Takeaway: For funders, this raises an important question: Are we investing only in solutions to today’s problems, or are we also strengthening communities’ ability to address tomorrow’s? For nonprofits, it underscores the value of building community power that can last and be applied across different issues as community needs and priorities evolve. For more on this approach, explore Community Science’s resources on building community power.
2. Invest in the next generation of leadership, not simply youth participation.
Community change often takes generations. Yet organizations working on housing, environmental justice, health, or other community issues may not necessarily see youth leadership development as part of their work. MCUP’s experience shows why they should.
Mersie began participating in MCUP’s Creek Rangers program at age 12 and, nearly a decade later, is helping advance the organization’s environmental research and community organizing. And she’s not the only example. Romona described how young people who participated in earlier leadership development efforts have continued to contribute as MCUP’s work has evolved.
This reflects a deliberate approach to building community power across generations. Young people need more than leadership skills. They also need historical context about past struggles and organizing efforts, along with the tools to understand systems, use data, and advocate for change. These are capacities they can carry into new issues and leadership roles over time.
The Takeaway: Make intergenerational leadership development part of community change strategies, even when youth aren’t the primary focus. This helps ensure communities develop future leaders equipped to carry the work forward and take on new challenges.
3. Keep building partnerships, even when funding is limited.
Partnerships can do much more than help deliver a grant-funded project. MCUP’s experience shows why continuing to cultivate relationships, even when funding is limited or unavailable, can be critical to sustaining community change.
Community Science’s early partnership with MCUP brought research and capacity building expertise alongside local knowledge and community leadership. Since then, MCUP has continued cultivating partnerships, even around work without dedicated funding. These relationships have helped explore emerging issues, such as lead exposure, and access new opportunities through conferences, technical assistance, and additional grants. They have also helped bring MCUP’s work and the concerns of rural Mississippi communities to national audiences.
The Takeaway: For nonprofits, continue investing in relationships where possible, even when resources are stretched. Those connections can help sustain momentum and open doors to the next phase of work. For funders, supporting collaboration, relationship development, and access to technical expertise may not produce the most visible short-term deliverables, but these investments can strengthen an organization’s ability to act over time.
4. Don’t let a data desert determine what communities can accomplish.
Communities are often expected to demonstrate the problems they face with data, yet the information needed to make their case may be difficult to access or may not exist at all.
During the webinar, Mersie described the challenges of finding reliable information about environmental conditions, including water and soil quality, in rural Mississippi. Her advice was practical: do the best you can with what’s available, talk with residents who know the community, and find partners who can help gather or generate the evidence that’s missing.
This is where the idea of data as a defense becomes powerful — using evidence to help communities protect their interests and advocate for change. Research and accessible data can help communities question whether systems are serving residents, challenge assumptions, and make a stronger case for change. The partnership between Community Science and MCUP reflected this approach, combining research expertise with community knowledge and equipping residents with tools to use evidence in their advocacy.
The Takeaway: Don’t let limited data prevent action. Start with available evidence and community knowledge, and build relationships with research partners who can help fill gaps. Investing in communities’ ability to generate, understand, and use data strengthens their capacity to advocate for change.
Rethinking What It Means for an Investment to Last
Nearly ten years later, the most important story isn’t whether the original program continued. It’s what communities are now equipped to do because of it. Leadership, relationships, and the capacity to organize and advocate outlast individual grants, even as continued investment remains essential to advancing the work.
So perhaps the question isn’t simply whether a program lasted, but whether the investment left communities better equipped to drive change long after the grant ended.
There’s more to the conversation. Hear firsthand what nearly a decade of community change taught us about leadership, partnerships, and sustaining progress. Watch the full webinar: Ten Years Later: What It Takes to Build Lasting Community Change.
About the Authors
Brandi Gilbert, PhD, Managing Director, brings expertise in researching topics and evaluating initiatives related community resilience, especially efforts that build community capacity to respond to natural disaster. She also has extensive experience working with youth to build their capacity to lead change in their community. She is actively involved in the evaluation profession, is a graduate of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) Graduate Education Diversity Internship (GEDI) program, and then led the program for six years. She leads Community Science’s practice area on youth leadership and civic engagement.
Mersie F. Watkins, PhD Candidate, Environmental Science
Jackson State University
Mersie serves as a youth organizer and research assistant with Mississippi Communities United for Prosperity, where she supports community-based environmental justice efforts. A native of Duck Hill, Mississippi, Mersie has been involved with the organization since she was 12, beginning through its Creek Rangers youth program. Her experience also includes work with Georgia Tech’s Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 4 Environmental Justice Section, and the Highlander Education and Research Center. Her work centers on youth engagement, environmental justice, community sustainability, and elevating the perspectives of rural communities.
Roma Taylor Williams
Executive Director, Mississippi Communities United for Prosperity
Romona is a community and economic development practitioner with 30 years of experience working with predominantly African American communities. She currently leads Mississippi Communities United for Prosperity, where she oversees the Achieving Sustainability through Education and Economic Development Solutions model. The model has received national recognition for helping address decades of flooding in Duck Hill, Mississippi, through green and gray infrastructure and the Creek Rangers program, which prepares young people ages 8–18 to become environmental stewards through science, math, art, reading, and technology.
Romona’s commitment to economic, environmental, and social justice has shaped her work to equip historically under-resourced communities with the tools and resources for community members to thrive. Her experience includes community and economic development, affordable housing and finance, climate change, environmental health, and sustainability planning. Before joining MCUP, she served as director of communications and development for Southern Echo.
Questions this post answers:
- What makes community change last after grant funding ends?
- Why should funders invest in community power as well as programs?
- How does youth leadership development support long-term community change?
- Why do partnerships matter when funding is limited?
- What can communities do when local environmental data are unavailable?
- How should funders think about whether an investment has lasted?