Coalition Action Planning

Achieving Tree Equity is a crucial — and enormous — undertaking. By diligently engaging community voices to build a unified strategy, your coalition can move confidently toward its goals, one step at a time.

Begin with community engagement planning to ensure all perspectives are thoughtfully included from the start. Next, conduct a comprehensive Tree Equity Needs Assessment to evaluate the state of the urban forest and review existing programs and policies. With that groundwork laid, you can formulate a Coalition Action Plan that operationalizes your goals and reflects the community’s needs, priorities and contributions. 

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Community Engagement Plan

Suggested Time: 2–3 weeks

Level of Difficulty: Challenging

Partcipants: 2–4 individuals passionate about outreach and relationship building; review and approval by core coalition team

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Community Insights

Suggested Time: 4–6 weeks

Level of Difficulty: Challenging

Partcipants: 2–4 individuals with community engagement expertise; review by coalition core team

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Tree Equity Needs Assessment

Suggested Time: 2–3 weeks

Level of Difficulty: Moderate

Partcipants: 2–4 individuals with diverse networks and expertise; review and approval by core coalition team

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Coalition Action Plan

Suggested Time: 3–4 months

Level of Difficulty: Challenging

Partcipants: Led by a subcommittee of the coalition core team, with actions detailed by responsible parties

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Community Engagement Plan

Develop a community engagement plan to mobilize stakeholders and ensure meaningful participation. This exercise will help you and your collaborators tailor community engagement activities to their intended audiences, understand logistics and define desired outcomes.

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Activity Steps

Complete the “Plan Overview” section of the Community Engagement Plan Worksheet to set a clear directive for your plan.

Continuing in the Community Engagement Plan Worksheet, use the “Activity Timeline” section to draw up a schedule of activities.

Use the “Activity Template” — the final section of the worksheet — to plan individual activities in more detail.

Share these worksheets with the coalition core team for review. The finalized Community Engagement Plan can serve as a guiding document that helps your audiences understand how to participate in your initiative and how their voices and feedback will be integrated.

Community Insights

Local knowledge is data. When you engage directly with community members, you uncover perspectives and insights that can only be observed by people who have a deep understanding of the community based on lived experiences. This information is crucial for refining your coalition’s priorities and can provide powerful evidence to deepen the rationale driving the work.

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Activity Steps

Use your community’s Tree Equity Score data to identify priority neighborhoods (see Toolkit 1).

Hold “semi-structured” conversations to gather insights from community members in priority neighborhoods. Complete one Community Insights Worksheet for each interview, survey, focus group, etc.

Use the Neighborhood Profile Worksheet to identify key insights and common themes from all the community members you’ve spoken to.

Share your findings with the coalition core team and back to participants, and use the data you’ve acquired to either maintain or adjust the priority rankings of each neighborhood.

Tree Equity Needs Assessment

Follow a set of simple guiding questions to conduct a Tree Equity Needs Assessment for your city or region. This exercise will give you a more detailed understanding of existing urban forestry programs, local policies, avenues of community engagement and the state of the urban forest in your community. It will also help lay the groundwork for more informed planning in the future. Any entity or sector focused on advancing Tree Equity can lead this holistic assessment, but we recommend that they work with a diverse team of stakeholders who can contribute a wide range of knowledge and community connections.

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Activity Steps

Use the Tree Equity Needs Assessment Worksheet to evaluate the status of existing programs and conditions in your community.

Based on your findings, use the same worksheet to identify actionable needs that your coalition can address.

Share findings and suggestions with your coalition core team to refine and update as needed.

Coalition Action Plan

Create an action plan outlining steps, responsibilities and timelines for implementing the coalition’s initiatives. This four-part exercise will help you set a clear directive for your plan and then break larger priorities down into actionable steps that move the coalition’s Tree Equity goals forward.

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Activity Steps

Fill out the “Plan Overview” section of the Coalition Action Plan Worksheet to set a clear directive for your plan.

Complete the “Action Playbook” section of the worksheet, identifying all concrete steps the coalition can take to advance its priorities. At this stage you will also identify people or groups who might lead each action.

Once leads and supporting partners are assigned to specific actions, they will fill out one “Action Template” for each action.

Finally, use the “Action Plan Checklist” to draft your Coalition Action Plan in full, making sure to seek review by the coalition core team and responsible parties.