Where You Are in Your Participatory Investing Journey.
Understanding where you are starting in your Participatory Investing journey is key to developing an effective strategy for your institution.
Where You Are.
Understanding where you are starting in your Participatory Investing journey is key to developing an effective strategy for your institution. Knowing where you are now allows you to plot an ambitious, attainable, and actionable trajectory for your Participatory Investing work. To facilitate this, we’ve developed a short four-question quiz that helps you assess and pinpoint your starting point in your journey across different functions within an institution.
Use Your Quiz Results.
This quiz is a great first step toward identifying the areas within your investment functions that may be most ripe for immediate and long-term participatory work. Using your results, look at this action-framework to identify where you are. Then, look for places where you can make micro improvements now and slowly build towards a more comprehensive integration of participatory practices in the future.
On the downloadable PDF, we invite you to look at the matrix to identify where you are starting within each investment function to see how they map across the Spectrum of Engagement. The matrix mirrors the detailed action-framework linked above.
Participatory Investing is a way of viewing the work. It should be iterative and deeply integrated into an institution—it is not a box to check.
The Spectrum of Engagement.
While we believe that more participation in your investment functions is important, we know that transitioning to full participation all the time may not be right for your community or your institution. We also want to acknowledge that although spectrums are traditionally linear, your journey towards Participatory Investing does not have to be. It is not a requirement to go from A→B→C. Your journey may look like B→E or A→B→A→C.
We encourage you to ask what best supports your community and what level of participation is authentic to you. This is a great opportunity to speak with your community directly about how they want to engage. Remember to re-read the Participatory Standards we presented earlier to facilitate authentic and harm-free engagement!
Note:
The Spectrum of Engagement in this toolkit was adapted from Rosa Gonzalez’s Facilitating Power Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership. It is written from the perspective of the community and describes how interactions are perceived or felt from that vantage point. When evaluating where you are on the spectrum, consulting your community is the best way to assess where you are and develop a strategy for where you are headed.
Non-Participation
Denying access to information, withholding information, or otherwise not sharing information as a result of unconscious or conscious exclusion. It can be intentional, such as when aiming to reduce harm before incorporating community voice.
Inform
Providing objective, relevant, and accessible information in a timely manner regarding decisions that have already been made. The information isn’t just clear and understandable, but it’s transparent and provides the context needed to make sense of it.
Consult
Gather input to obtain feedback, experiences, expertise, etc. through clearly defined channels controlled by your organization.
Involve
Ensure assets, needs, and concerns are integrated into processes and inform planning through bilateral processes that give everyone an opportunity to influence the direction/outcome. Involving the community includes more one-time engagements.
Collaborate
Ensure the capacity for the community to be in a substantive partnership role in decision-making and the implementation of decisions. Collaborating with the community includes more ongoing partnerships.
Share Power
You foster democratic participation and equity by sharing decision-making power. Confirm you are sharing power by tracking your efforts through continued conversation with your community to ensure they feel like they have the information and agency to make decisions.
Back to Participatory Standards