How FCI uses participatory practices to develop solutions

Technology has ushered in an era of unprecedented availability of tools and services, promising to dramatically improve quality and reach within social systems. Digital platforms can connect people to resources instantly, data systems can coordinate care across providers, and mobile applications can deliver services directly to those who need them. Yet within the social safety net, availability is not the same as accessibility.

A service that exists but cannot be accessed by those it aims to serve represents a failure of design. True accessibility—and more critically, effectiveness—depends on a service's ability to meet the unique needs of individuals with a deep understanding of the barriers they face. These barriers are not merely technical. They are cultural, linguistic, economic, educational, and experiential. They are shaped by trauma, discrimination, unstable housing, unreliable transportation, limited digital literacy, and countless other factors that generic technology solutions routinely fail to account for.

This gap between technological promise and lived reality is not inevitable. At Future Communities Institute, we believe that piloting and studying initiatives that partner deeply with communities and leverage participatory design practices is essential to ensuring that tools and services can fulfill their promise of being higher quality, more accessible, and more effective than previously possible. Our work is grounded in a fundamental principle: technology implementation within vulnerable communities must be designed for them, by them.

This commitment manifests through systematic participatory practices that redistribute power in the design, implementation, and evaluation of technology solutions. These practices are not performative gestures toward inclusion but structural mechanisms that ensure community voices shape every phase of our work, transforming technological possibility into tangible impact for those who have historically been underserved by innovation.

Why Participation Matters

Too often, well-intentioned solutions miss the mark—not because of a lack of expertise or resources, but because they're designed without the people who will be most affected. The result? Programs that don't fit real needs, strategies that ignore local knowledge, and interventions that fail to create lasting change.

We believe there's a better way.

Participatory practices are grounded in a simple but powerful principle: the people closest to an issue hold invaluable insight into solving it. When we invite community members to share their knowledge, shape decisions, and co-create solutions, we don't just build better programs—we shift power, honor lived experience, and create change that actually sticks.

This isn't just good practice. It's essential practice. And it's at the heart of everything we do.

As a nonprofit organization, we are accountable to the communities we serve. That accountability shapes how we work, what we prioritize, and how we measure success. It means the trust and time community members grant us must be met with genuine reciprocity.

What Are Participatory Practices?

Participatory practices invite people who are most affected by an issue to become active partners in the work. Rather than treating community members as passive recipients of services or subjects of study, we recognize them as experts in their own lives and essential collaborators in finding solutions.

This approach transforms how we design programs, conduct evaluations, and make decisions. It means listening deeply, creating space for diverse voices, and being willing to share power meaningfully. It means acknowledging that our role isn't to have all the answers, but to facilitate a process where answers emerge from the community itself.

Why Lived Experience Matters

Those experiencing barriers and systemic challenges hold essential knowledge that others simply don't have. Their experience of reality is privileged and must be taken seriously. If our goal is empowerment and justice, we must attend first to the experience of those facing barriers—not only how they see and feel those barriers, but also the solutions they envision.

We can bring theoretical knowledge and methodological skills to help communities formulate, clarify, and think through their solutions. But this means more than speaking on their behalf. It means that communities co-create the agenda.

The Spectrum of Participation

Participation isn't one-size-fits-all. Different projects call for different levels of involvement, and authentic participation means being transparent about what role community members will play.

We recognize that participation exists on a spectrum, with different approaches suited to different contexts. The appropriate level depends on project scope, timeline, resources, organizational capacity, and most importantly, community capacity and interest. While some frameworks present participation as a ladder to climb, we view each level as a legitimate option when applied authentically.

One model we use is the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation, which helps us identify different pathways for engagement:

This means sharing clear, balanced, and accessible information so people understand what's happening, why it matters, and how it may affect them. This is the foundation of transparency, even when deeper participation isn't possible given project constraints.

In many cases we actively seek feedback from community members to help guide our choices. Their input directly informs our decisions, and we close the loop by sharing how their voices shaped the outcome.

We might work directly with community members throughout the process, ensuring their ideas, concerns, and priorities are not just heard but genuinely reflected in the solutions we develop together.

Other times, projects call for us to partner with community members as co-creators, where decisions are made together and community voices carry equal weight in shaping direction and outcomes.

What matters is clarity. We explicitly articulate the degree of influence community members will have in each initiative. This transparency builds trust and allows communities to make informed decisions about their participation. We're intentional about the extent of involvement that makes sense for each project—and honest when constraints limit what's possible. Each level of participation has value when applied appropriately and authentically.

What Reciprocity Looks Like

At the heart of participatory practice is reciprocity—the understanding that when communities grant us their time, trust, and knowledge, we must give something meaningful in return. This can take many forms:

Documentation that communities can use — Creating records of community organizing, strategies, and successes that become tools for ongoing work and can inspire others facing similar challenges.

Information in accessible formats — Returning findings to communities in ways they can actually use—visual documentation, plain-language reports, presentations tailored to community needs rather than funders or other outsiders.

Strategy and tools — Providing frameworks, measurement tools, or alternative arguments that communities can use in their advocacy and decision-making.

Skills and capacity building — Training community members in methods they can use themselves, so they can continue gathering and analyzing information long after we're gone.

Ethical responsibility — Honoring trust with confidentiality, being clear about our role from the start, and never using community knowledge in ways that could cause harm.

Our Commitment

At our core, we believe that expertise doesn't only live in boardrooms, universities, or consulting firms. It lives in communities—in the lived experience of people navigating systems, solving problems, and building resilience every day.

When we center those voices, when we share power authentically, and when we design with rather than for, we create change that reflects the people it's meant to serve. That's not just our methodology—it's our values in action.

As an organization accountable to the communities we serve, we recognize that participatory practices are more complex, more time-consuming, and more resource-intensive than traditional implementation models. They require us to be humble about what we know and curious about what we don't. They demand that we move at the speed of trust.

Yet this approach is also more effective, more sustainable, and more just. When communities help design the solutions meant to serve them, those solutions actually work. When people with lived experience guide evaluation, we measure what truly matters. When we build with communities rather than for them, we create not just better technology implementations, but stronger, more empowered communities capable of shaping their own futures.

Whether we're designing a new program, evaluating impact, or developing strategy, participatory practices guide how we show up. We're committed to doing this work in partnership, with humility, and with a deep respect for the knowledge that communities bring.

Because the best solutions don't come from experts alone. They come from all of us, working together.