Resources:

Imagine an economy that serves people, instead of people serving the economy. Where community and worker-owned businesses meet local needs. To get to the economy we need, we need to get under the skin of the economy we think we know. Join us for a deep dive into understanding the “economy” that you won’t find in economics class or by watching stock tickers. This is an opportunity for changemakers to join a learning community on collective root cause solutions.

Financial coaching helpline support is 1:1 support for organizations seeking support on financially related questions. It can be a good introduction to 1:1 financial coaching or a quick way to talk through a financial question or challenge.

Reflections from the December All-Partner Convening - a day devoted to connection, learning, sharing, and restoration.

With the Commercial Affordability Summit convening, COO sought to share what we learned from the pilot project, which concluded in 2022, and provide a platform for learning about additional strategies, models and programs that are currently being designed and implemented in support of an equitable and thriving small businesses environment and greater economic justice.

COO hosted a series of two workshops to learn tools and practices around financial planning and sustainability. These workshops offered case studies on how organizations are using financial information and long-range planning to make strategic decisions about their visionary work, and offered tools and strategies to create financially sustainable and health organizations.

Communities of Opportunity (COO) and Grow America (formerly National Development Council) hosted this 3 session Asset Management Training series for community-based organizations or individuals that own real estate, are developing a space to own, or considering ownership in the future.

COO and the Seattle Foundation partnered with Bolder Advocacy to offer a training on the fundamentals of nonprofit advocacy. A PDF of the presentation may be accessed here and a recording of the training can be accessed here.

This conversation with youth leaders and staff from Young Women Empowered (Y-WE) explored how to create supportive and healthy spaces for youth leadership and development — and youth ownership of transformative organizing work.

This workshop focuses on basic fundamentals of what fiscal sponsorship is - including a particular focus on exploring how to best support youth-led groups who are interested in being fiscally sponsored and working with youth-driven projects.This panel included, youth and community leaders who have had successful experiences as a fiscal sponsor and/or as a fiscally sponsored group and what contributed to a healthy relationship.

The first two sessions from the GROUNDED 2022 Speaker Series are now available for viewing! Learn how local organizations and faith communities are responding to community needs and priorities in a time of global pandemic and displacement.

COO Learning Community strategy partnered with Communities Count to bring workshops and capacity building resources on data and evaluation to community partners.

New Toolkits & Capacity Building resources for community organizations — learn more about supports available through the COO Learning Community

To support continuous improvement and learning for equitable contracting work COO sought to document where and how COO has been successful in creating more equitable procurement processes, particularly in the area of contracting, and what gaps continue to exist. The Equitable Contracting Report here, summarized a review of King County COO Community Service Agreements and Consultant Contract processes, best practices from the field, and themes from key informant interviews with COO community partners.

Financial Oversight is an important part of leading an organization – we need good financial information and tools to make sound strategic decisions about our work. In this workshop, Amy Michael and Sarah Tran discuss how organization leaders approach financial oversight. They share some tools and practices you can use at your own organization to check in on your own financial oversight. Recorded March 8, 2022

This virtual showcase highlighted the work of five rooted community groups who worked to uplift the experiences of communities most impacted by COVID-19 and the culmination of their community-led data collection and storytelling projects conducted over 2021.

2021 Community Development Lunch & Learns series’ recordings are now viewable. These alternating deep dives on specific topics and issues of equitable community development, offered opportunities for participants to ask questions and discuss their projects with peers and community development experts.

Videos and recap from COO’s September 2021 Meeting the Moment gathering, Community Conversations on Healing, Advocacy and Building the Future We Want.

In this workshop trainers do a deep dive into capital campaign readiness and the importance of organizational capacity for effective capital campaign fundraising. Regardless of where you are on your campaign journey, if you know a capital campaign is on the horizon, taking steps now to build out your fundraising capacity is critical to your organization’s long-term success.

This workshop provides a high-level overview of capital campaign fundraising concepts and terms including campaign feasibility study, prospect research, gift pyramids, and other fundraising activities within the context of a capital campaign. Also included is a review typical capital campaign timelines and using a community-centric fundraising lens, an exploration of fundraising strategies that can leverage broader support for an organization’s vision and mission by centering on a shared vision for the future.

Recapping the Cultivating Community Transformation discussion and reflections on the journey of COO — the difficulties of shifting systems and institutions to enter into more relational and authentic conversations with community, the early intentions of COO coalesce around shared values, listen to the leadership within communities, and the work to invest in and strengthen community partnerships that can inform and bring momentum to the policy and systems changes needed for a more equitable King County.

Join COO's "Cultivating Community" 6 part series, designed to amplify and learn from the efforts of our community driven partnerships.

In this first session, participants explore community-based strategies to build an equitable and regenerative economy, using the Just Transition framework.

In this second workshop, the focus is on the need to create and build new economic structures rooted in the experiences of our community.

Workshop description: Illuminate what to consider when your communication starts local and then is shared more broadly. How does the strategy and tools change? What are the major thresholds, advantages, and challenges for different scales of audiences? Workshop focuses on scales of neighborhood, city, and county. Watch the recording here.

Learn more about crafting effective messages and getting audiences with local government to meet your goals. Build relationships and reputations that facilitate generative partnerships and ways to influence public leadership and represent your community.

COVID-19 has redefined nearly every process and task. This workshop will look at the digital tools for communicating at various levels (team members, clients, community members, funders) that can keep us socially connected while physically distant. These tools can be power campaigns even without pandemic restrictions.

Explore steps that align storytelling and policy change. We follow a process from idea to advancing community-centered solutions through formal policy change. How to translate culturally specific perspectives for white audiences, while staying authentic to our own communities and cultures.

Explore making appropriate and generative connections with media members. Ensuring your story is expressed in ways that promotes your mission and affirm your community. Exposing pitfalls and traps to avoid. Recording, press kit template and presentation slides available.

Building intercommunity coalitions. How to be in solidarity with those communities under most threat, even when not your own. Starting and maintaining alliances during COVID-19. Workshop featuring guest speaker Colleen Echohawk-Hayashi.