Intentions and Impact: What We’re Learning About Showing Up for Our Partners

By Ky Lindberg, Vice President of Community Engagement

There’s a moment that keeps showing up in our community engagement efforts lately. It usually happens within the context of a conversation— sometimes on a partner call, sometimes in a community meeting, or sometimes in a quiet moment of reflection after we’ve left the room. It’s a moment of disconnect that stays with me. At times it’s realizing we may be using the same words (systems change, equity, collaboration, etc.) while meaning different things. At other times it’s realizing that, despite our best intentions, our ways of showing up may not be resulting in the impact we had wished or had planned to bring about.

This leads us to ask ourselves an honest question: does it matter that our intentions are good in how we approach community engagement if the impact we’re having doesn’t reflect what our partners actually want or need?

As I’ve reflected in prior blogposts, we’re intentional in our approach to community engagement. We’re committed to responsive, effective programs; remaining active in community; exploring, analyzing, and elevating critical issues; and holding ourselves accountable to community. While naming our intentions is important, it’s just one side of the equation. The other piece is naming the desired impact our community partners have shared—what they hope to see, feel, and experience based on how we show up. They want our mutual engagements to leave them feeling heard and supported. They want to experience momentum and hope, along with a stronger sense of agency around their community’s health and wellbeing. They also want support to strengthen their work.

After nearly two years of walking alongside our partners, we’ve done the intentional work of using what we’ve learned to shape our approach to community engagement. And we continue to surface questions we need to keep asking to identify what we are doing well, avoid past missteps, and create space for us to continue learning together. Most importantly, all of this sensemaking points us toward a shared vision. It’s where our intentions around how we show up as an organization translates to engagement that our community partners feel is beneficial. It also helps us fulfill our commitment to being steadfast partners in our work to improve health for all Georgians. 

While we know our shared vision will continue to evolve, there’s much that we’ve already learned that we’re applying to our work.

The first is that collaboration has to be cultivated.

We often say that collaboration is at the heart of this work. And it is. One of our clearest lessons has been that collaboration doesn’t just happen because people are at the same table. It has to be nurtured. We’re learning that effective collaboration requires:

• Time to build relationships, foster trust, and develop shared understanding
• Tools to help partners navigate complexity and make decisions together
• Resources, beyond funding, that include access to information, connections, technical assistance, and space to learn
• Care and consistency, so people feel supported enough to stay engaged, even when the work gets hard

We fully accept the multitude of roles we are in partnership to play, whether as a funder, convener, relationship broker, a sounding board, or collaborative partner.

The second is being nimble and responsive.

We recognize that no two partners or no two communities are the same, which means that no two partners or communities need the same. Some partners want us more deeply embedded with them in their work by thinking alongside them and navigating complexity together. Others want space to invite us in only as needed, with the reassurance that we’ll be there if and when requested.

This has challenged the Initiative to be and stay nimble. We strive to be adaptive and to measure our effectiveness by whether our partners feel and see that adaptability show up in practice. To do this well, we need to be present and active in community. We need to show up consistently, build and sustain trust, and create different inroads to engage partners that go beyond traditional grantmaking.

Being nimble means staying rooted to a clearly defined purpose while also remaining responsive to partner needs. Importantly, it also means being willing to change course when the impact we’re having doesn’t match up with our intention.

The third is that we need to share power, not just insight.

With ongoing engagement, listening, and learning, we are deepening our understanding of what it truly means to share power and co-create our shared vision. Co-creation asks a lot of all involved. For the Initiative, it means that we:

• Let community priorities shape not just what we do, but how we do it
• Strive for transparency about our role, our constraints, and our decision-making
• Create feedback loops where partners can influence and challenge our approach

We do so to hold ourselves accountable to our community. We’re learning that accountability is not a checkpoint; accountability is a practice. And it requires us to regularly examine the distance between our intentions and the realities our partners experience.

Walking forward, together.

We know there’s no linear path to systems change that advances health equity for all Georgians. There’s only the ongoing work of building relationships, making meaning together, and adapting as we go.

Though it all, we’re learning that this work, at its best, feels less like executing a plan and more like walking alongside others with a shared commitment to something bigger than any one of us. Good intentions matter. But they are only the beginning. What we’re committed to—what our partners deserve—is the ongoing, honest work of not assuming trust, but earning it through approaches that reflect care, accountability, and respect.