09/24/2026
Compensating Community Voice and Lived Experience
Community engagement works best when people are not only invited into the conversation, but also valued for what they bring to it.
Listening sessions, roundtables, advisory groups, focus groups, and community meetings are all ways to bring lived experience into planning and decision-making. When people are contributing their time, knowledge, relationships, and personal experience, compensation should be part of the design.
The same is true when larger organizations partner with grassroots groups.
Those partnerships can include paid labor, stipends, training, technical assistance, or practical support that helps strengthen the smaller organization over time.
Sometimes that support is simple:
Insurance requirements — helping organizations understand certificates of insurance and partnership requirements.
Internship structure — helping build a short training process so interns can contribute meaningfully.
Marketing systems — creating processes that make outreach easier to manage and repeat.
Reusable administrative tools — helping organizations save time by creating forms and systems they can continue using.
These may seem like small things, but for organizations working with limited staff and capacity, they can make a real difference.
Strong community partnerships should create value in both directions.
Lived experience is expertise. Community engagement should be reciprocal.
