Introduction
Local civic groups often begin with energy, concern, and good intentions. People want to do something together, but they may not yet agree on what the work is, where to start, or who needs to be involved.
At this early stage, many groups feel pressure to choose an issue quickly. That can create momentum, but it can also narrow participation too soon, make the work feel pre-decided, or leave out people whose involvement is needed for the effort to be trusted. On the other hand, staying too broad for too long can make the work feel vague and hard to act on.
This resource is based on a session from the Democracy Resource Hub Learning Series, a set of practitioner-focused learning experiences for people building local civic capacity and democratic practice. The session, “Orienting Around Shared Purpose in Diverse Communities,” featured Monte Roulier of Community Initiatives Network and Bobby Milstein of ReThink Health / The Rippel Foundation. It explored how local leaders can bring people together around shared purpose before narrowing to a specific issue, campaign, or project. You can watch the full session recording and access the slide deck in the Download Resource section below.
This resource is especially useful for people building place-based civic renewal efforts who have people ready to work together, but do not yet know what the shared work should be. It offers practical questions, frameworks, and examples to help leaders build shared orientation, trust, and legitimacy without imposing a predetermined agenda.
When would I use this?
Use this resource when your group has people who care about the community, but is still trying to clarify what to do together.
It can help when you are:
- starting a local civic initiative without a clear issue or campaign yet
- bringing together people with different concerns, identities, or political perspectives
- trying to avoid choosing an issue too quickly and losing participation
- feeling stuck because the group’s purpose is too broad or abstract
- looking for a positive frame that can hold many concerns without becoming vague
- trying to build long-term civic capacity, not just win on one issue
This resource is not an issue-selection worksheet. It is a field guide for the stage before issue selection, when leaders are trying to build enough shared orientation, trust, and legitimacy to decide well.
What makes this approach different?
Many civic efforts begin by asking, “What problem should we solve?”
That question matters, but it can also push groups too quickly into problem definition, issue selection, or campaign planning. In diverse communities, people may not yet agree on what the problem is, what caused it, or whose priorities should come first.
This approach starts one step earlier.
Instead of asking only, “What should we work on?”, it invites leaders to ask:
- What kind of work are we trying to do together?
- What would make this effort feel legitimate to people not yet in the room?
- What future are we trying to move toward?
- What conditions would help more people belong, contribute, and act together?
- What capacity do we want to build over time?
The goal is not to avoid action. The goal is to choose action that strengthens the community’s ability to keep working together.
Shared purpose does not mean everyone agrees on everything. It means there is enough common direction for people to begin learning, acting, and building trust together.
We actually grow in the direction of the questions we ask.
Start by clarifying what kind of work you are doing
Local groups often begin with a shared sense that something needs to change. But before choosing a specific issue or campaign, it helps to clarify what kind of work the group is actually trying to do.
In the session, Bobby Milstein describes a common tension between two orientations:
Campaign-first orientation
A group may organize around improving a specific condition or issue. This can create focus, momentum, and measurable wins.
The guiding question is often: What can we win on?
Whole-community orientation
A group may organize around strengthening the community’s ability to thrive together across many challenges. This can build trust, belonging, and long-term civic capacity.
The guiding question is often: What are our aspirations, assets, and legacies?
Neither orientation is wrong. Most healthy groups move between them over time. The problem comes when groups are unclear about which kind of work they are doing.
If a group narrows too quickly, people who care about different concerns may drop away. If a group stays too broad, people may not know how to participate. Shared purpose helps groups hold this tension long enough to choose their next move with more clarity and legitimacy.
Try this with your team
Ask:
- Are we trying to win on a specific issue right now?
- Are we trying to build capacity across issues?
- Who might feel invited by our current focus?
- Who might feel excluded or unsure where they fit?
- What do we need to understand before narrowing?
The goal is not to avoid focus. The goal is to choose focus in a way that builds trust rather than weakening it.
Shift from crisis framing to aspiration framing
Many civic efforts begin in crisis. People gather because something feels broken, urgent, or unjust.
That urgency matters. But crisis framing can also narrow the work too quickly. It can lead groups to organize mainly around what they oppose, what they fear, or what must be stopped.
In the session, the facilitators invite a different starting point:
What would it look like for all people and places to thrive together, no exceptions?
Aspiration framing does not ignore harm. It gives people a constructive direction for their energy. Instead of only asking what is wrong, it asks what the community is trying to build.
This shift can help groups:
- Bring more people into the conversation
- Surface hopes, assets, and lived experience
- Reduce pressure to choose one issue too quickly
- Keep short-term action connected to long-term civic capacity
A positive frame is especially important when people come from different political, cultural, racial, institutional, or generational backgrounds. They may not agree at first on the problem. But they may be able to begin with a shared question about what kind of community they want to become.
It’s not difference that makes division, it’s division that makes division.
Try this with your team
Instead of beginning with: What problem should we fix?
Try asking: What would thriving look like here?
Then ask:
- Who is thriving now?
- Who is struggling or excluded?
- What would need to change for more people to belong and contribute?
- What do people already care enough about to act on?
This moves the group from reaction toward construction.
Explore the “Thriving Together framework at a Glance”
Use Vital Conditions to make “thriving” concrete
“Thriving together” can sound inspiring, but it needs to become concrete enough to guide action.
The Vital Conditions framework gives communities a way to name the conditions people need in order to reach their full potential. These include basic needs like food, housing, safety, transportation, and meaningful work, as well as deeper civic conditions like belonging and civic muscle.
In this resource, the point is not to teach the full framework. The practical use is simpler: Vital Conditions help a group move from a broad aspiration to shared reference points.
Instead of asking only: What issue should we pick?
A group can ask: What conditions need attention for more people in our community to thrive?
This helps avoid two common traps:
- Choosing an issue so narrow that it disconnects from the wider community
- Staying so broad that no one knows where to begin
Belonging and Civic Muscle are especially important because they shape whether people feel they matter and whether they can act together. Without belonging, issue work can become fragile or exclusionary. Without civic muscle, aspiration remains only a statement of values.
Try this with your team
Choose one community concern your group has discussed. Then ask:
- Which Vital Conditions does this concern touch?
- Who is most affected?
- What would greater belonging look like in this situation?
- What would it take for people to act together, not just receive services?
- Would working on this build more civic capacity over time?
The point is not to force every concern into a framework. The point is to notice interdependence before narrowing too quickly.
Seven Vital Conditions
The Seven Vital Conditions are the conditions people and places need to thrive. They include physical necessities like housing, transportation, safety, and meaningful work, as well as social conditions like belonging and civic muscle.
They help communities move from a broad aspiration like “thriving together” into shared reference points that can guide strategy.
The seven conditions are:
- Humane Housing
- Lifelong Learning
- Basic Needs for Health & Safety
- Meaningful Work & Wealth
- Thriving Natural World
- Reliable Transportation
- Belonging & Civic Muscle
Learn more about the 7 Vital Conditions
Video: You Don’t Need Permission to Care About Your Community
Build stewardship capacity that lasts beyond one campaign
Local groups often organize around one urgent issue, win or lose, and then lose momentum. People scatter, relationships fade, and the group has to start over the next time a problem emerges.
This resource invites a different question: Will this work leave behind stronger relationships, more trust, and more capacity to act together?
That is where stewardship becomes useful. In the session, stewards are described as people, organizations, or networks who work with others to create the conditions everyone needs to thrive, beginning with those who are struggling most. Stewardship is not a title or formal role. It is a way of showing up.
Stewardship practices include:
- Connecting across differences
- Creating opportunities
- Learning and adapting
These practices help groups move from one-time issue work toward long-term civic muscle.
Stewards are people, organizations, or networks who work with others to create conditions everyone needs to thrive together, beginning with those who are struggling and suffering.
Everyone can be a steward.
Try this with your team
Before choosing an action, ask:
- Will this strengthen relationships across difference?
- Will it help more people see themselves as part of the work?
- Will it build capacity we can use again later?
- Will it create opportunities for people to contribute, not just agree?
- What will remain after this project or campaign is over?
Learn about the Essential Stewardship Practices
Use multisolving to avoid fragmented issue work
Many communities face more problems than they can solve one at a time. Housing, transportation, health, safety, belonging, climate, and economic life are often deeply connected.
In this session, multisolving is introduced as a way to look for actions that advance multiple goals at once.
For local civic leaders, this does not mean trying to solve everything. It means asking whether one effort can strengthen several conditions at the same time.
For example, a community project might address public space, youth belonging, local safety, and cross-generational trust all at once. That kind of work can create more durable civic capacity than a narrow issue campaign that wins once and fades.
Problems might be easier to solve together rather than one by one.
Try this with your team
Ask:
- What other community concerns are connected to this one?
- Who else would benefit if we approached this differently?
- Could this action build belonging, trust, or shared power while also addressing the issue?
- Are we designing for one win, or for capacity that grows?
Learn about multisolving (Video): The Multisolving Institute
Video: What If Problems Are Easier to Solve Together?
Sequence the work instead of rushing clarity
Some groups are ready to choose a concrete issue. Others need more listening, trust-building, or shared framing before narrowing.
The session introduces Three Horizons as one useful way to think about that timing.
In simple terms:
- H1 is the current pattern: what is dominant, familiar, or failing.
- H2 is the transition space: experiments, practices, and next moves.
- H3 is the future the community wants to grow toward.
The practical question is: What can we do now that moves us toward the future we want without pretending we are already there?
This helps groups avoid rushing into premature clarity. It also helps them notice small experiments that may already point toward a healthier civic future.
Try this with your team
Ask:
- What current patterns are we trying to move away from?
- What future are we trying to grow toward?
- What small action could help us learn, build trust, or expand participation?
- What would count as an H2+ move: a step that builds toward the future we want?
Learn more about the Three Horizons Framework
What does this look like in practice?
Across the country, communities are entering this work through different doors: health, early childhood, economic vitality, civic renewal, belonging, and cross-sector collaboration. These examples are not blueprints to copy. They show how shared purpose can take shape in different contexts.
North Sound Accountable Community of Health (WA) (Watch Video)
Starting point: Health and human services collaboration across five counties.
Shared purpose move: Expanded from healthcare coordination toward a broader commitment to just and inclusive conditions for all community members to thrive.
What to notice: A narrow institutional starting point became a wider civic stewardship effort.
Imagine Fox Cities (WI) (Watch Video)
Starting point: A region facing economic change, belonging gaps, and questions about the next generation.
Shared purpose move: Used broad community conversations and resident surveys to ask what it would take for the region to thrive together.
What to notice: They slowed down before narrowing, using participation and data to build civic muscle.
Contra Costa Together (CA) (Watch Video)
Starting point: Institutional equity and accountability work involving community-based organizations and public systems.
Shared purpose move: Shifted from changing institutions alone toward building belonging, co-creation, and shared responsibility across systems.
What to notice: The work moved from accountability into relationship, repair, and co-creation.
Inland Empire Vital Conditions Network (CA) (Watch on Video)
Starting point: Regional policy and cross-sector collaboration in a large, diverse region.
Shared purpose move: Built civic infrastructure through shared language, storytelling, measurement, and convening around Vital Conditions.
What to notice: Shared purpose became infrastructure, not just a statement.
Lessons across contexts
While no two communities look the same, several themes repeat:
- Start with aspiration before narrowing to an issue.
- Invest in participation that reflects the community.
- Use data and stories to deepen belonging, not just justify action.
- Treat early action as learning, not final proof.
- Build civic muscle that can carry future work.
The key lesson is simple: communities enter this work through different doors. What matters is whether the work expands belonging, strengthens relationships, and builds shared capacity over time.
Practical Moves for Local Leaders
- Change your inquiry from “What’s wrong?” to “What would thriving look like?”
- Slow down when legitimacy is thin.
- Act without waiting for permission. Frame early action as learning, not final victory.
- Situate any issue choice inside a longer civic arc.
- Convene across institutional and grassroots lines to design initiatives that serve multiple constituencies.
- Identify and name belonging gaps in their community.
We actually grow in the direction of the questions we ask.
Common Pitfalls & Tensions
- Narrowing focus too quickly → exclusion and burnout.
- Staying vague too long → loss of traction.
- Rushing into action → wasted capacity.
- Giving too much oxygen to crisis framing.
- Treating legitimacy as something granted, not enacted.
- Assuming big is better (scale vs depth).
- Treating difference as a barrier instead of an asset.
Download Resource
Orienting Around Shared Purpose in Diverse Communities – Webinar, February 13, 2026
Related Resources:
- Thriving Together At a Glance
- Vital Conditions (webinar)
- Shared Stewardship; Unsung Stewards; Stewards Rising
- Belonging and Civic Muscle (webinar)
- Three Horizons (webinar)
- Movement to Thrive Together Hub
- Communities Rising (National Civic Review)
About the Facilitators
This is part of the Learning Series produced by the Democracy Resource Hub, a project of the Shift Action Lab.
This was the first session of a three-part mini-series, Who, What & How: Foundations for Civic Leadership, designed for people building place-based civic renewal projects.
Bobby Milstein
Bobby Milstein is part of ReThink Health / The Rippel Foundation, where his work has focused for many years on thriving together through shared stewardship. In this session, Bobby invited participants to think beyond issue selection and crisis response, asking how communities can orient around better questions, strengthen belonging and civic muscle, and build the conditions for all people and places to thrive together. He emphasized that shared purpose is developmental: groups begin where they are, learn through action, and grow in the direction of the questions they ask.
Monte Roulier
Monte Roulier is connected with Community Initiatives Network and works alongside communities that are building shared stewardship, belonging, civic muscle, and place-based approaches to thriving together. In this session, Monte shared stories from communities including North Sound, Fox Cities, Contra Costa, and the Inland Empire, highlighting how groups can move from narrower issue work toward broader civic infrastructure, shared language, and cross-sector collaboration. He emphasized the importance of learning from communities already practicing this work and making visible the often under-reported movement for civic renewal.