Chapter 4. Introduction

Section Overview

A great deal has been researched and written on collaborative processes that support community engagement. The literature does not offer a systematic review of how successful organizations provide the structural support needed for community-driven action.

This chapter presents a review of frameworks to help organizations determine the capacity they need to support community engagement. It includes a set of testable propositions about required capacity. The frameworks were developed by matching the structural capacities required for any endeavor as defined by Handler et al. (2001) with

1. the nine principles of community engagement (Chapter 2),
2. community coalition action theory (CCAT; Butterfoss et al., 2009), and
3. the constituency development framework (Hatcher et al., 2001; Hatcher et al., 2008; Nicola et al., 2000).