The White House Council for Community Solutions has a mandate to “identify the key attributes of effective community-developed solutions to our national problems” with an engagement approach that emphasizes multiple sectors. As part of this effort they are working to build capacity within communities to “establish collaborative as a means to creating broad-based change.” One vehicle for building community capacity is the Council’s recently released, Community Collaboratives Toolbox.

As a resource, the Toolbox includes a detailed guide of key activities and resources to structure and sustain collaborative and effectively generate meaningful community participation in these efforts. It is made up of four primary tools that each includes additional resources to support collaboratives towards success. The four tools are:

• Building or Improving a Community Collaborative: Guidance by Life Cycle Stage:- This tool describes the five stages of a collaborative’s life, including case studies, a checklist of key activities, and common roadblocks for each stage   
• Community Collaborative Assessment – A Diagnostic of Success Readiness”: Helps communities evaluate a collaborative’s readiness to implement its action plan in the community    
• Community Collaboratives Learning Examples: - Capacity, Structure, Data and Funding”: Provides examples from successful collaboratives on these four critical success factors 
•   Community Collaboratives - The Next Generation of Community Participation: Describes how to generate meaningful community participation, a critical element to community collaborative success