Contribute/Archive/Community Building Team/Build Principles

When we focus on value and impact, we must be explicit. On this page are implicit principles that guide the work of the Community Building Team. We share them so that you can have a better understanding of both how we work and how to work with us. The principles below are how we approach our work, how we ensure quality in our work, and can help collectively build understanding around how our work gets done.

1. Build Understanding - Demonstrate competence. Seek first to understand. Every engagement is different. We care about people and doing the right thing for them. In order to best help them, we are curious.
2. Build Connections - Be a catalyst for connection. Our team has a broad reach in the organizations. Sometimes the best way we can build is by connecting what is already there.
3. Build Clarity - This is important when bringing more people into a project. We seek to navigate through the confusion to create clarity for us, our partners and the community.
4. Build Trust - This is about having someone’s back. It’s important that the people we work with know that we are in this with them, together.
5. Build Pilots - Our work is not a one size fits all. We care about the best solution so we test our assumptions to see what works and build from there.
6. Build Win-Win - Focus on mutual benefit. We engage in win-win partnerships because our success is dependent on others. More people can only sustainably come into a project when it’s mutually beneficial. We want to make our partners look good.