Build stronger partnerships. Deepen engagement. Measure the change that matters.

Many coalitions talk about systems-change work but implement programs instead. If they use a systems or strategic approach, it often happens during strategic planning and then gets shelved once the day-to-day work begins.

This workshop instead treats the Waters of Systems Change framework as an actionable tool.

Participants learn the foundation of the Waters of Systems Change framework and explore its six conditions: policies, practices, resource flows, relationships, power dynamics, and mental models.

Participants then work through a real case example, either anonymized or from their own coalition, using structural, relational, and transformative levels to examine what is changing and what isn't.

In the expanded half-day workshop, participants move beyond mapping to focus on implementation and develop a starter rubric they can apply to their coalition's priority issue.

Coalitions often treat consistent meeting attendance as proof that collaboration is working, but attendance alone rarely tells the full story.

Who is in the room? Who isn't? Who is contributing? Who is making decisions? And are community members simply participating, or do they have meaningful opportunities to shape the work?

This session directly addresses that gap and helps participants distinguish between engagement, where people are present, and collaboration, where power and decision-making are genuinely shared.

Participants use a short diagnostic tool to assess where their coalition currently falls, from token participation to shared power, and identify practical next steps based on where they are.

The workshop is grounded in our real coalition and public health engagement work, not abstract theory.

Good evaluation questions ground the story a coalition tells its funders, board, partners, and community.

But evaluating a coalition is different from evaluating a single program. Collaborative work involves shared outcomes, multiple actors, different strategies, and systems-level changes that may happen over time.

This workshop walks participants through what strong evaluation questions look like when the "program" is actually a network of partners working toward a shared outcome rather than a single intervention.

Participants examine what separates a useful evaluation question from a vague one and have an opportunity to practice rewriting weak questions into stronger questions that can help ground a grant story, annual report, or broader evaluation strategy.

This full training brings the concepts from the other three sessions together into one deeper learning experience.

Participants develop a practical foundation for understanding how coalitions work, how they differ from programs, how collaboration evolves, and what is needed to move from bringing people together to creating coordinated action.

Participants leave with a practical coalition-building toolkit: how to structure a coalition, recruit the right partners, distinguish meaningful collaboration from attendance, engage community members without tokenizing them, and translate that work into measurable goals.

The training is designed for coalitions in the formation or early maintenance stage, as well as established coalitions that are restarting or need to rebuild momentum.