Elevating Equity Initiative
The Elevating Equity Initiative was a multi-year effort designed to advance equitable approaches to research by centering community voice, lived experience, and partnership. Through three mixed-methods research projects, community partners, researchers, and funders worked together as one unified ecosystem to explore two important questions:
- What research approaches help children and families thrive?
- What does it takes to build more equitable relationships between communities and research institutions?
The following resources share practical guidance and insights from the initiative for community partners, researchers, funders, and others working to build more equitable research partnerships.
FUNDER BRIEF
Elevating Equity: Lessons Learned from Funding Whole-Family Research to Help Children and Families Thrives
Shedra Amy Snipes, Ph.D.
Destiny Jones, MA
Kantahyanee Murray, Ph.D
Elevating Equity: Lessons Learned from Funding Whole-Family Research to Help Children and Families Thrives shares insights for funders and philanthropic leaders seeking to support more equitable research partnerships. It highlights approaches for strengthening relationships, sharing power, providing flexible resources, and creating the conditions for meaningful collaboration between researchers and communities.
PRACTITIONER GUIDE
Elevating Equity Through Community Voice: A Guide for Community Partners Engaging in Research
Destiny Jones, MA
Shedra Amy Snipes, Ph.D.
Kantahyanee Murray, Ph.D
Elevating Equity Through Community Voice: A Guide for Community Partners Engaging in Research provides practical guidance for community partners involved in research. The guide offers strategies and tools for building trust, navigating conflicting institutional systems, sharing ownership of the research process, and ensuring that community voice and lived experience remain central throughout the work.
About Lift Every Voice
Lift Every Voice Evaluation, Research, and Strategy served as the coordinating and learning partner for the Elevating Equity Initiative. We facilitated peer learning among the research teams and funders, supported reflection and shared learning across the initiative, and synthesized insights from the three research projects and their community partnerships.
Drawing on this collective learning, Lift Every Voice developed the Funder Brief and the Practitioner Guide. The Practitioner Guide was co-created with a working group of community partners whose experiences, insights, and recommendations shaped its content and practical tools. We acknowledge the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation for their commitment to equitable research and support to the Elevating Equity Initiative.
Lift Every Voice partners with foundations, nonprofits, research institutions, and communities to design learning and research processes that center the people most affected by inequities and shift power toward communities.
