Tools

Storytelling Toolkit: Lessons Learned from NHT's "Where Will We Live"

National Housing Trust
This toolkit is a guide for advocates to replicate the National Housing Trust’s efforts and successfully employ digital, visual and audio storytelling strategies within their advocacy tactics.

Opportunity360 Community Dashboard

Enterprise
Opportunity360 Community Dashboards provide the information necessary to determine where action is most needed and where established programs and policies have been most successful in any neighborhood in the country. These dashboards now allow data comparison for up to three census tracts, anywhere in the US. In the free Opportunity360 Community Dashboards, you will find over 150 indicators from 27 sources.

Public Policy Resources

BestColleges.com
This guide includes links to free public policy online resources that will help one get a better sense of the entire field.

Public Policy Career Outlook

BestColleges.com
This guide provides you with in-depth information on degree planning including program structures, concentrations, and skill development and application for a Public Policy career.

Earning a Public Policy Master’s Degree

BestColleges.com
This resource will help you learn about the common Master's in Public Policy admission requirements, coursework, and jobs available for graduates.

Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture

Tema Okun, dRworks
This is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture that show up in our organizations. The characteristics listed below are damaging because they are used as norms and standards without being proactively named or chosen by the group. They are damaging because they promote white supremacy thinking.

Honor Native Land: A Guide and Call to Acknowledgement

Sponsored by: U.S. Department of Arts and Culture
Created in partnership with Native allies and organizations, the Guide offers context about the practice of acknowledgment, gives step-by-step instructions for how to begin wherever you are, and provides tips for moving beyond acknowledgment into action.

Vision, Values, and Voice: A Communications Toolkit

The Opportunity Agenda
This toolkit focuses on the broader goal of identifying universal themes and values that tie together a range of issues.

Rights for Renters Messaging

Public Will Initiative with Topos
This tool reiterates focusing on the positives instead of the negatives when it comes to messaging. Even though the series is called Rights for Renters, it isn’t actually limited to renter issue areas—such as the Critiquing Without Undermining Government brief.

A Progressive’s Style Guide

Hanna Thomas (SumOfUs.org); Anna Hirsch (ActivistEditor.com)
A Progressive’s Style Guide is explicitly multi-voiced and is created with the following commitments. 1) We combat discriminatory language. 2) We seek advice or more information when we’re unsure. 3) When writing, speaking, or using images, we aim to use examples that reflect a broad range of identities and perspectives.

Housing Matters

Urban Institute
Housing Matters is an online resource for the most rigorous research and practical information on how a quality, stable, affordable home in a vibrant community contributes to individual and community success.

55 Competency-Based Ideas for Professional Development

The Bridgespan Group
This extensive list of 55 practical on-the-job learning opportunities will help you build customized development plans for your direct reports.

Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast

Race Forward
A podcast that features movement voices, stories, and strategies for racial justice. Co-hosts Chevon Drew and Hiba Elyass will provide you with their fresh takes on race and pop culture, as well as, uplift narratives of hope, struggle, and joy, as we continue to build the momentum needed to advance racial justice.

Radical Imagination

Angela Glover Blackwell; Powered by PolicyLink
To imagine radically, means to think big, demand better, and redefine the terms of the struggle; the Radical Imagination podcast delivers all that. The debut season confronts the challenging issues facing our nation, including immigration, the need for big new economic ideas, the impact of climate change, revolutionary approaches to community safety and justice, and more.

Six Maps That Reveal America’s Expanding Racial Diversity

William H. Frey, Brookings Institute
A pre-2020 census look at the wide dispersal of the nation’s Hispanic, Asian and black populations.

The 1619 Project

The New York Times
The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

Internalized Racism Inventory

Cultural Bridges to Justice
Fundamental questions to ask when taking an internalized racism inventory.

The Move

Ceasar McDowell, Founder; Ayushi Roy, Podcast co-host; Misael Galdamez, Website Author; Julia Curbera, Website Author
The Move is a movement to rebuild our public’s muscle for democracy. This movement aims to bring together people of all backgrounds who are seeking to facilitate real civic engagement in today’s democracies. The Move rebuilds our public muscle in three ways: We will partner in the design and implementation of at least one civic engagement project each year. We will provide a collaborative learning and knowledge exchange platform on TheMove.MIT.edu and it’s adjacent social media channels for cities, institutions, and community organizations. We will advance learning, experimentation, and innovation in civic design using eight design principles.

Massachusetts Defense For Eviction (MADE): Self-Guided Eviction Help

Greater Boston Legal Services (GBLS)
This completely free guided interview is for Massachusetts tenants who are being evicted. It is estimated to take between 25 and 90 minutes for a typical tenant to use on their own. It will help you make sure that you respond to your landlord's eviction case correctly.

Boston Neighborhood Change Interactive Map

Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University
A new interactive mapping tool showing the dramatic demographic, social, and economic changes that have occurred in Greater Boston since 1990. The tool includes data from the 1990 and 2000 decennial censuses and from the American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates for 2010 and 2016.

Prosperity Now Scorecard

Prosperity Now Scorecard
A comprehensive resource for data on household financial health, racial economic inequality and policy recommendations to help put everyone in our country on a path to prosperity.

The National Equity Research Database, Boston Edition

Brandeis Institute for Child, Youth and Family Policy
This is a database of 286 socio-economic indicators on a wide range of subjects, including demography, education, employment, health, housing, earnings and ancestry covering the Boston metropolitan area.

Building Blocks: Connecting People, Places and Policies

Enterprise Community Partners
A podcast for thought-provoking conversations about the current issues, trends, ideas and big questions facing the affordable housing and community development field in the United States.

MASSCAP Trainings: Recorded Webinars

MASSCAP
This resource contains all the past recorded webinars from MASSCAP (Understanding Immigrant Rights, Community Action Impact, Succession Planning, and More!)

Operationalizing Racial Equity & Inclusion at Living Cities: Tools for Getting Started and Keeping At It

Living Cities
These are some of the resources and contacts LC has shared with organizations who are looking to embed racial equity and inclusion into their work.

Racial Identity Caucusing: A Strategy for Building Anti-Racist Collectives

Crossroads
This toolkit describes methods for anti-racism work and the value of caucusing

Understanding Systemic Racism

Race Forward
"What Is Systemic Racism?" is an 8-part video series that shows how racism shows up in our lives across institutions and society: Wealth Gap, Employment, Housing Discrimination, Government Surveillance, Incarceration, Drug Arrests, Immigration Arrests, Infant Mortality

Rejecting Bigotry, Demanding Action

Opportunity Agenda
Together with UnidosUS, The Opportunity Agenda completed public opinion and messaging research with this goal in mind: to tell a story of American diversity that reflects our values and our aspirations as a country stronger because of our myriad backgrounds, ethnicities, races, experiences – because of the parts of us that may make us different, but ultimately also make us stronger. This research provides guidance for those using their platforms to reject bigotry while demand action.

Rolling Back Inclusion

The Democracy Collaborative
In order to help communities across the country—both rural and urban—speak up in a moment in which the administration has made clear its intentions to scale back or dismantle these key federal frameworks, we will be tracking the new federal attacks on inclusive community development here, along with state-level measures enabled and encouraged by the new federal context.

Racial Wealth Audit

The Institute on Assets and Social Policy; Demos
This interactive online tool uses real-world examples to help policymakers and advocates explore and understand the causes and effects of the racial wealth gap.

Tools for Cultivating and Connecting Leaders

Living Cities
A well curated toolkit to support effective and adaptive leadership

Documentaries about Gentrification

Gentrification Learning Community
These films can be used to learn about issues of gentrification in America

Gentrification Learning Community Resources

Gentrification Learning Community-Mel King Institute
This compendium of resources studied by the gentrification learning community includes broad perspectives for defining and tackling issues of gentrification

Racial Equity Tools

Center for Assessment and Policy Development
This site offers tools, research, tips, curricula and ideas for people who want to increase their own understanding and to help those working toward justice at every level – in systems, organizations, communities and the culture at large.

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