This is a guide for funders on the valuable role of collaborative process in community development initiatives. It draws from the lessons learned by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation during twenty years of funding conflict resolution, collaboration, and civic engagement. It also draws extensively on other organizations’ experiences, the community development literature, evaluations of community development initiatives, and the authors’ expertise. In this guide you will find: -Adescription of the elements of good collaborative community development process -Examples of challenges to collaboration and of tools to help overcome those challenges -Guidance for funders to inform their grantmaking -Lists of additional resources useful for further study The lessons learned about collaborative process and community development reflect the diversity of the practitioners who provide process advice to community development initiatives. Whether practitioners identify themselves as collaboration specialists, facilitators, or mediators, as proponents of ³deliberative democracy² and collaborative governance, or as community organizers or community development specialists, they tend to agree on common elements of process that conduce to tangible community development outcomes. We hope that by clarifying those elements, this guide will help our colleagues in the community development grantmaking community as well as the grantees and the communities they support.
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