Insights & Important Update about Inspiring Communities 

Welcome to my first announcement and blog as the Executive Director of Inspiring Communities. Since last fall, the co-leadership model was announced. During my tenure, we have been through quite a transition, from testing a co-leadership model to moving into an intermediary role. Our transition to leading social innovation through a community-centric lens has resulted in our organization needing to be adaptive.  

This brings me to the purpose of this blog: What has been happening at Inspiring Communities?

Inspiring Communities has undergone rapid change and multiple transformations since its inception in 2018. Each year, IC has evolved, bringing community champions and community together to ideate in real time to explore building a network of change agents throughout Atlantic Canada. I was brought into strategic leadership in late 2022 to observe, document and learn from the organization’s fundamental shift in purpose around its experimentation in being “anything” and “everything” to what the community wanted or needed to guide us into embracing the complexity of being a systems-change intermediary. Looking back at this showcases the power of developing a governance culture that allows social innovation to flow and meet the needs of its end users. The mission was to convene the drivers of social change on behalf of the community through our Atlantic network of businesses, organizations and government partners – truly building an ecosystem approach to policy and community adaption. What Have We Learned?

Communities are Complex
Centering equity requires explicitly naming the diverse, marginalized identities of the people we serve. It is essential to listen and identify their specific needs in each context, recognizing that community engagement is the first step in a comprehensive process. Communities are not confined to geographic boundaries and often overlap, with many intersections being overlooked. To genuinely serve these communities, we must prioritize first-voice leadership, ensuring that those directly affected lead projects and organizations. First voice cannot be adequately represented by external organizations or businesses, which often have agendas and systemic limitations. While these entities can act as advocates, supporters, and platforms, they should not lead in this context.

Trust and Readiness
In partnerships, setting clear intentions is important, but the true sustainability of the work depends on building trust within relationships. Laying this groundwork and defining how we collaborate is crucial for a successful partnership. The success of any community project is built at the speed of trust, with community staff playing a critical role in facilitating collective decision-making. Rapid changes and transformations within programs, organizations, and systems can be harmful. It is in the best interest of all involved—staff and community alike—to prevent such harm through clear, consistent communication. 

When such change is unavoidable, preparing for and providing healing and closure is vital. 

Evaluation and Learning
Furthermore, while funders may be more comfortable with academic and project-based evaluators, community scientists and community-led evaluations offer a valid and valuable alternative. These evaluation forms are more effective in informing change on the ground and can better motivate policy changes. It is important to ask for whom we evaluate and how the data is applied and shared, ensuring that the evaluation process serves the community’s needs and drives meaningful outcomes. 

We applied these learning points to evolve beyond our geography-specific teams, branching out into thematic work across sites in Digby County, CBRM and Dartmouth/HRM. Just as we were gaining traction in our work with communities on the margins, we received news of changes to our operational funding in late spring 2024. 

Our Future

Although Inspiring Communities has demonstrated resilience by enduring times of uncertainty and multiple transformations, we still found ourselves stuck in precarity as a non-profit with its core work dependent on operational funding. The fund development climate, during our planned phase of co-leadership and evolution to thematic programs, would inevitably lead us to experience what I have been coining a “death bloom”. A death bloom is triggered by numerous environmental factors which causes a significant amount of stress for a succulent or plant to direct its remaining energy and resources to reproduce or seed. 

Shortly after our announcement to co-leadership, we found ourselves in a tough position to choose between the organization’s survival or sustaining the momentum we have created with changemakers from African Nova Scotian, Newcomer, and Mi’kmaq communities. There were telltale signs of readiness to continue the work we have been doing in community, and fortunately, it no longer requires the original structure of Inspiring Communities to thrive. The board and team saw this as an opportunity to prioritize the voices of the communities we serve and knew that the old model we were founded upon could not be sustained. 

Following our mission to build equitable thriving communities, we directed our focus on germinating and seeding our initiatives around our staff changemakers: 

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While it may seem unconventional to discuss the eventual sunset of Inspiring Communities so openly, I can confidently affirm that this decision was made in the true spirit of equity. As we enter this phase of re-imagination and birth, we believe that redirecting our remaining energy and resources back into the community, and amplifying the voices that champion their causes, is a just and meaningful choice. There is a bittersweet irony in the fact that Inspiring Communities is experiencing some of its most inspiring moments as it approaches its conclusion. We invite you to stay with us and witness the remarkable sunset of this journey, and to meet the promising seeds of our future. 

As we transition, we will live on as a learning archive for those interested in the journey of equitable systems change. This work is ongoing, and the spirit of Inspiring Communities will continue to thrive in the initiatives and leaders it has nurtured. 

With deep gratitude for our supporters, funders and communities, 
Jocelyn Li