According to the Pew Research Center, only 17% of Americans say they trust the federal government to do what is right. That is one of the lowest reported numbers in nearly seventy years. It is not surprising that communities which have historically been excluded from policymaking, are wary of participating now in climate action.
Yet climate shifts demand an urgent response. Communities face longer summers, colder winters, and flooding in places that never flooded before. But urgency coming from institutions that most people don’t trust only worsens the situation. Too often, governments are under pressure to deliver on sustainability goals quickly, while impacted communities, especially frontline communities, are asked to engage without real power or long-term benefit. Governments have solicited resident input without valuing their expertise, breaking trust over and over again. That gap in trust is an ongoing problem to match policy goals with reality. Closing it requires both sides to show up differently. Governments must be more transparent and follow inclusive policy design, while communities must be uniquely positioned to identify and co-develop comprehensive solutions.
IMT’s updated Community Engagement Framework is designed to help government partners and community-based organizations (CBOs) move from transactional engagement to more trust-based partnerships that can actually close gaps between policy, programs, and people.
What We Learned: The Foundation We Built Upon
As a first in IMT’s history, our original Community Engagement Framework was a significant first step. It gave us a structure to define “meaningful engagement” in decarbonization policies. We sought to help government partners understand how to value and seek out frontline communities as experts, and give CBOs a clearer sense of what to expect and ask for from institutions.
The original framework also established a shared vocabulary, named a new core audience, and signaled that community engagement was essential, not optional, for equitable policymaking. But just like policies, frameworks have to grow with what we learn, and we have learned through the last five years of working alongside government agencies, community organizations, and other partners that defining “meaningful engagement” is not the same as gaining trust or achieving transformational engagement.
What’s Changing: Three Transformational Shifts & New Audience
The updated framework reflects a deeper set of commitments that grew from our work in the field. Our new framework reflects the transformation shifts we ask our partners to make along with us:
- From consultation to co-creation. Frontline communities are not just reviewers of decisions that others already made. Ultimately, they are the designers of decisions yet to be made.
- From short-term engagements to long-term relationships. Participating in virtual meetings and singing contracts aren’t partnerships. Real trust is built through shared goals, transparent communication, faithful follow-through, and accountability over time.
- From technical solutions to community-informed outcomes. Policy and technical solutions aren’t enough; they will ultimately fail if they don’t reflect what frontline communities actually need.
And there is a fourth shift that the updated framework makes explicit for the first time: a genuine commitment to Tribal engagement. Tribal Nations are a newer and often overlooked audience in building decarbonization spaces.. The updated framework names this directly and offers guidance for how to engage with the sovereignty, culture, and expertise that Tribal partners bring.
Deeper, Intentional Engagement, especially with Tribal Nations
Meaningful engagement in this space looks different from what typical policy processes produce. It includes:
- Respecting sovereignty, culture, and lived experience. This type of engagement is foundational to every interaction, not a box to check. Tribal Nations are not mere stakeholders but actual governments with rights, deep relationships to land, and knowledge systems that pre-date and go beyond what state and city policies address.
- Building on trust and follow-through, not timelines and deliverables. The urgency in climate change is real, but when urgency is imposed upon communities who have been historically excluded, it only perpetuates the extraction and injustice. We have to be OK with building relationships at the pace of trust, not well-crafted timelines and deliverables.
- Creating genuine opportunities to shape priorities. Co-creation means that CBOs and Tribal partners are present and participating as full contributors to priorities, rather than responding to agendas that have already been set.
For government agencies, this goal asks for a real shift in mindset from outreach requirements to relationship stewardship. That means 1) investing time and resources upfront, 2) identifying trusted intermediaries that have built relationships and credibility with community partners, and 3) supporting equitable engagement approaches that are co-created with those partners, not handed over to them after the fact. It means being willing to slow down in the short term in order to move forward together in the long term.
Equitable Research & Technical Assistance
Frontline communities need more than a seat at the table. They also need the right tools to participate when they get there. Delivering community-centered technical assistance means:
- Producing research that reflects lived experience and community priorities. Decarbonization policy rightly focuses on building stock data, energy models, and cost-benefit analyses. But this data alone misses what residents already know: which buildings are unlivable, which landlords or building owners ignore much needed repairs, and which neighborhoods have been systematically disinvested in and gentrified. That knowledge and experience are research too, and tailored technical assistance will help communities better strategize around these challenges.
- Surfacing historical barriers. Housing instability, disinvestment, language access, and documentation status are not “side concerns.” In a very real way, they shape whether any equitable decarbonization policy or program actually reaches those who need it the most.
- Technical assistance that builds advocacy capacity. The goal should not be to help communities comply with policy, but help them advocate for the resources and protections they need, and to hold decision makers accountable.
Better inputs lead to more effective and equitable policy design. Local governments designing building performance standards, retrofit incentive programs, and climate equity plans need to value qualitative insight alongside quantitative data. Public comment processes must value lived experience as evidence for change. Additionally, research should be community-informed so that policies and programs work for everyone as intended.
Accessible Education & Community Capacity
Building decarbonization is complicated, and involves topics such as electrification, building performance standards, retrofit, financing, inflexible timelines, and more. CBOs need tools that are:
- Equitable and accessible in multiple languages, culturally relevant, and designed for the people the policies will affect.
- Actionable in order to give frontline communities what they need to navigate complex policies, advocate for resources, and demand the necessary protections that keep decarbonization policies from accelerating gentrification.
Investments in accessible community education are investments in program effectiveness. When residents understand what a building performance standard means for their building, they can participate meaningfully in the policy process, deepen democratic engagement, and support policy and program success. For example, tenants who know what protections they’re entitled to during retrofits, or frontline communities that can articulate what they need from their city’s climate programs will be more likely to follow final guidance and less likely to believe misinformation. Governments that engage deeply with residents will be less likely to follow false solutions that exclude and frustrate marginalized communities, breaking trust. As a result, related city programs will be more likely to hit their targets.
An Invitation
The updated IMT Community Engagement Framework is now available, and we want you to use it. But before you do, we invite you to sit with this question: Where are you still operating transactionally?
- Where are communities being invited to comment rather than co-create?
- Where are relationships being reset every funding cycle?
- Where is urgency being used to justify extraction and exclusion?
This framework is only a tool; the real work is the honest evaluation that comes as you read and apply it.
Whether you’re a government partner navigating equity requirements, a CBO seeking out capacity and resources, a convener in the field trying to connect these dots, or a thought leader shaping what’s possible—we want to work alongside you.
Ready to move from transaction to trust?
IMT’s updated Community Engagement Framework is available now. Use it, share it, and let it challenge you.
Explore the CE Framework