IF’s active collaboration with Inclusive Dubuque, begun in earnest early in 2015, wrapped up this November as the initiative moved into its priority-setting stage.  By that time, the collaboration had enabled IF to achieve numerous  milestones, some of them unique in our history:

• IF’s first sustained work with a network (Inclusive Dubuque’s community-wide reach is the result of having knit together more than 50 government, NGO, private-sphere, and educational mission partners)
• Training 23 local volunteers in IF-style exploratory discussion
• More than 50 “community dialogues” with a diverse cross section of approximately 580 community residents
• IF’s first success in connecting its exploratory discussion approach to priority-setting, decision-making, and social change.

Meanwhile, IF’s work with Inclusive Dubuque shows every sign of yielding new possibilities for the Foundation and contributing to others already under development.
What has been especially gratifying about both these milestones and future possibilities is that they have been the intentional result of building IF’s capacity and building local capacity at the same time.  When IF partners with another organization, we look for win-win outcomes.  The Dubuque experience shows that partnering with networks can lead to WIN-WIN outcomes.

You can learn more about ID, their community dialogues, and the Community Equity Profile here: http://inclusivedbq.org/