InCommons: supporting community-based leadership

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Cohort-based community leadership programs (CLPs) are a common approach to enhancing knowledge, skills, and networks within a particular community. However, the CLP model is resource intensive and, as a result, limited in impact. This article describes an alternative approach being undertaken on a statewide scale. InCommons is focused on activating a network that lets people find each other so they can share credible knowledge, resources, and insights for solving community problems. One dimension involves finding and sharing the information people need in a leadership commons. Another offers support through well-facilitated gatherings that allow communities to make progress in spite of thorny differences. Using a participatory action research (PAR) approach, we explain the theory of action informing the whole initiative and assess initial implementation in terms defined by community leaders. As such, this article provides practical insights for those interested in increasing the scale and impact of their work with community-based leaders. Introduction The 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to political scientist Elinor Ostrom for her work on a new model of collective action she calls the Commons. Within western capitalist democracies economists have posited that self-interest creates a ''tragedy of the commons'' because individuals deplete shared resources for private gain (Hardin, 1968). In contrast, Ostrom and her colleagues draw attention to situations, where communities leverage trust and cooperation to develop and share ''common-pool resources,'' observing that, sometimes, traditional divisions between public and private are inaccurate (Bollier, 2007; Lessig, 2001). Among other things, Ostrom and colleagues examine how research-based knowledge can be shared as a common resource (Hess & Ostrom, 2007); informed by Ostrom's model, this article highlights a statewide initiative focused on sharing the practical knowledge of community-based leaders. In late 2010, following 18 months of …