The Community Innovation Toolkit
A practical guide for turning community knowledge into co-designed solutions that improve health and well-being. Download the Toolkit and WorkbookNonprofits, funders and institutions invest significantly to support community health—but inequities persist.
The most powerful, lasting change happens when the people closest to the problem are the ones shaping the solution.
The challenge
Nonprofits, community leaders, institutions, and funders invest significant time, energy, and resources into improving community health and well-being. At a time of competing priorities, reduced resources, and rapidly changing needs, it’s even more challenging to know what problems to prioritize and how to design solutions that effectively address communities’ needs.
If you’re working through a complex community challenge, some of these questions may sound familiar.
We’re hearing about five urgent problems at once. How do we decide where we can actually make a difference?
We’ve done the listening sessions. We have pages of community feedback. Now what?
Everyone agrees the current approach isn’t working—but we don’t have the time or resources to start from scratch.
We want residents to genuinely shape the solution, not just react to something we’ve already designed.
Our funders want to know what we’re going to do and what impact it will have. Our community needs us to slow down and make sure we’re solving the right problem.
We have an idea we believe in. How do we test it with the community before we commit to it?
The opportunity
How can organizations surface and prioritize community challenges—and turn community knowledge into co-designed solutions that improve services and increase impact?
The process moves through six phases—Define, Scan, Prioritize, Design, Test, and Share—from defining and exploring a problem to designing and testing a solution and sharing your insights.
We created the Community Innovation Toolkit to give nonprofits, community leaders, funders, and institutions clear, actionable steps for identifying and solving pressing challenges alongside communities.
Built on 30 years of Health Leads’ experience, our Research and Development team has developed this toolkit to share the community-centered innovation process we’ve used, tested, and refined with partners across the country so you can adapt and use as needed.
Whether you’re solving a new problem or improving something that’s no longer working, this resource can help guide your community-centered journey toward health, well-being, and dignity for all.
Download the toolkit
This toolkit shares a process that centers community knowledge and expertise to solve challenges
The toolkit and its accompanying workbook guides nonprofits, funders and institutions through a simple, flexible and manageable innovation process for exploring challenges and creating opportunities to co-design with communities.
The Community Innovation Toolkit
The Toolkit guides you step by step through the complete innovation process, with detailed overviews, straightforward guidance, and real-life examples to support your work with communities to better meet their needs.
The Community Innovation Workbook
The Workbook includes 26 practical worksheets to guide you in collaborating with communities through every phase of the innovation process—from identifying the root cause of a problem to designing and testing solutions and sharing what you learn.
Get the Toolkit and Workbook
Who this is for
Community leaders, advocates, and community-based organizations
This toolkit provides concrete guidance and tools to help you work through challenges, design solutions, and test what works in your community.
Policymakers, funders, and institutions
This toolkit can serve as a framework for how to engage with and invest in a community-driven approach to innovation, shifting decision-making power to the communities most affected by the systems you shape so solutions are co-designed to effectively support them.
“Digging deeper often uncovers systemic causes—such as access barriers, inequities, or ingrained habits—that are not immediately visible. Community insight plays a crucial role in connecting these underlying factors. Including community experts in the process of identifying root causes moves efforts beyond simply treating surface symptoms and instead fosters long-term, sustainable solutions.”
Our approach
Innovation in Action
Innovation is an important process to bring about new ideas, products, and services to help solve complex problems we experience in the world. But it’s often viewed as a process that belongs to technology companies and big institutions, not something that belongs to communities.
As a result, band-aid solutions are developed that address symptoms rather than the root causes. They can be well-intentioned, but disconnected from the deeper, structural reasons a problem exists in the first place.
The most powerful, lasting change happens when the people closest to a problem are the ones shaping the solution, which is exactly what the Community Innovation Toolkit is designed to support.
This work isn’t built on theory alone. Health Leads’ R&D team has used this innovation process with communities to co-design equity-centered solutions to pressing health and well-being challenges.
Below, explore some of our innovation projects in action to see how centering community knowledge and expertise can help transform the systems critical to shaping our health and well-being.
Developing an Assessment Tool for Inclusive Integration of Health Promoters
Health Leads partnered with the Community Transformation Collective to co-design an assessment tool that helps healthcare institutions examine and strengthen the workplace policies and practices that shape how Promotores are integrated, supported, and valued. The goal: create more inclusive, equitable environments where Promotores can thrive and better support their communities.
Learn more →
Student-Driven Innovation
At California’s Saddleback College, underserved students struggled to find critical resources and a sense of belonging on campus. Health Leads guided student researchers through a design sprint to prototype real solutions including a resource website for undocumented students and a Latinx Student Center hub inside the campus app.
Learn more →
The Makers Residency
Health Leads created the Makers Residency to give community-based leaders the time, funding, coaching, and support to develop solutions to inequities they see firsthand. The Residency helped leaders define the challenges that matter most in their communities and turn their ideas into locally grounded approaches to advancing health equity.
Learn more →
Interested in partnering with us?
Whether you’re looking for a thought partner, facilitator, or collaborator, we’d love to learn more about the challenge you’re working on and how we might support your community-driven innovation process.
Sarika Abbi-Patel
Vice President, Research & Development