Ideas

Community capacity building infrastructure is more than a set of initiatives. It’s a sustained system of relationships, leadership, knowledge, and resources that enables communities to solve multi-faceted problems over time, as described in the blog by David Chavis, Building the Community Capacity Infrastructure: How Communities Develop the Power to Solve Their Most Complex Problems. David outlines the first steps, but what comes next is where Community Science can help.

For almost three decades, drawing on extensive experience and lessons learned, our work has focused on strengthening this infrastructure so communities are not starting from scratch with each new initiative. Instead, they are building lasting power, alignment, and capability. Below are examples of the types of services Community Science has provided.

1. Strengthen Resident Leadership and Power
A key feature of strong infrastructure is expanding participation in decisionmaking and ensuring that the communities most impacted have meaningful influence. We focus on identifying, engaging, and supporting grassroots and resident leaders so they can shape decisions that affect them. In Fresno, CA and Schenectady, NY, we helped identify and support grassroots leaders and partnered with them and other types of community leaders to evaluate strategies for integrating resident leadership into regional economic decisionmaking. We also helped build structures, such as community change councils, to facilitate collective action.

2. Build and Coordinate Community Change Infrastructure
Community capacity depends on connections and not isolated organizations. We help communities move from fragmented efforts to aligned systems. Our work emphasizes collaboration across sectors, funders, and community groups to bridge differences, identify shared goals, reduce duplication, and increase collective impact. For instance, in Schenectady, we supported the development of an infrastructure for grassroots organizing by convening partners, aligning stakeholders, and creating a funders’ table to ensure ongoing support.

3. Design Sustainable Support Systems (Not One-off Initiatives)
A major challenge in the field is that capacity building is often short-term and initiative specific. Our work focuses on creating durable structures that endure beyond a single grant or project. In Schenectady, we helped establish a funders’ table to ensure long-term investment in community organizing. In Fresno, we supported strategies to embed community leadership into long-term regional systems, not just a single initiative.

4. Use Data, Learning, and Feedback to Strengthen Systems
Effective infrastructure requires data for ongoing learning and adaptation. We support community-based organizations in identifying useful data and transforming it into knowledge and tools needed for evaluation, learning, and continuous improvement. For example, we support four communities across the country in building and sustaining data networks that bring together key actors to identify, access, and use data on the social determinants of health. This helps improve health outcomes for populations experiencing various forms of inequity. In rural Western North Carolina, we support a network of organizations providing out-of-school time services to build their individual and collective capacity to evaluate and use data for quality improvement and advocacy.

5. Translate Community Priorities into Systems Change
Ultimately, community capacity infrastructure enables communities to build power so they can shape policies, investments, and systems. We help community residents identify priority issues and develop strategies to address them, including 90-day action plans that drive quick wins and build momentum for long-term policy and systems change. In Schenectady, we supported community residents’ efforts to access data on rental properties that violated housing codes — an approach that helped build community power and improve housing in the city.

The Bigger Picture
Across all of these efforts, our work reflects a cohesive approach: we help communities build the infrastructure needed for ongoing problem solving — not just implement standalone solutions.
This includes:

• Developing leadership,
• Strengthening relationships and networks,
• Aligning resources,
• Integrating community voice into systems, and
• Supporting continuous learning.

Sustainable change does not come from a single initiative — it comes from a community with the capacity, relationships, and systems to work together over time.

Want to build community capacity with us?
Feel free to contact Kien Lee