About Community Solutions

Community Solutions, Inc. (Community Solutions) is an Indianapolis-based community development consulting company that facilitates community-building in communities as diverse as neighborhoods, social justice collaboratives, arts and culture organizations, housing services agencies, healthcare institutions, and public foundations, to name a few. Founded in 2000, Community Solutions initially focused on fund development and grant writing for non-profit and government agencies. However, we soon discovered that organizations were grappling with deeper issues related to program development and design, organization development, and public policy that needed to be addressed to ensure that organizations have all of the resources required to make meaningful and lasting impact. 
 

We are a small but influential organization that works with communities throughout Indiana and across the country. Our work is driven by a highly talented, intentionally assembled, collaborative team – the staff team has diverse backgrounds and skillsets to respond to clients’ needs systemically and holistically. They specialize in community development, organizational culture and strategic change, strategic planning, program design and evaluation, system redesign, public policy and advocacy, and collaborative leadership. 

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Community Solutions has learned from its work with communities that the dynamics of race and the historic oppression greatly influence a community’s ability to come together, feel heard, ideate, and implement collaborative solutions to community problems. Community Solutions is aware that community leaders can be influenced by their own social location and/or implicit bias when engaging in community. Community Solutions has also experienced that groups who have been historically marginalized and excluded in communities hold valuable wisdom yet can distrust community leaders and be disenchanted by past efforts. Community Solutions is committed to engage in these difficult conversations to reveal the mental models that promote and perpetuate inequities. This includes naming and challenging the ways that white dominant culture perpetuates harm in communities. It also requires skill to hold awareness for and repair the impact of internalized oppression and general distrust. Yet, both only happen in relationship.

 
Undergirding this work is an understanding and analysis of equity and the levers that impact equitable outcomes. Our work is rooted in the principle that within any community, there exists a wealth of knowledge and wisdom which can be channeled into collective action to achieve the communities’ desired results. To tap this wisdom, people in organizations must be engaged in ways that acknowledge the past, seize the opportunity of the present moment, and harness the courage to create a new future. 

We work alongside organizations to help them build relationships and equitable processes for transformation. We facilitate transformative process by engaging organizations in four areas: (1) critical analysis around the current situation, (2) collaborative problem-solving to think and vision a new equitable reality, (3) co-designing the conditions for change, and (4) developing tools for action, evaluation, and accountability.  Our aim is to create more equitable and inclusive institutions for more equitable and inclusive community solutions.