Best Practices for Building a Coalition

• Focus on building trust. Trust and relationships are key to any good coalition.
• Use Creative Youth Development activities and practices to build trust, group identity, and relationships.
• Use artistic practices to change relationships, perspectives, ways of thinking, and to break up routines. Engage hands, bodies, hearts, and minds.
• Share the work. Invite coalition members to participate in the design and leadership of meetings, activities, and initiatives.
• Regularly include youth, staff, leaders and donors to break down barriers, open up conversations, create new relationships, and begin partnerships.
• Change it up: vary where you meet, convene in artistic spaces, include food, artistic performances. Build in time for non-structured interactions.
• Encourage each other to work outside comfort zones, as doing so can lead to innovation and growth.
• Shake people out of their accustomed roles and relationships by breaking participants into varied group sizes and structures throughout the coalition building process.