Increasing influence
Whether your group is set up to address particular issues or wider community priorities more generally, it is likely that at some point you will want to have influence over what happens in your community. This includes influencing decisions and plans at both a local and national level.
This section contains resources and approaches that will enable you to increase your influence at a range of levels. In addition, our policy low-down and working in partnership sections will be particularly helpful in terms of increasing your influence.
Resources aimed at increasing your influence
Contribution analysis is a way to show the impact or progress of an activity or piece of work by focusing on how things that are more easy to measure ‘contribute’ to longer term, or higher-level outcomes.
This online learning resource, divided over 10 modules, is designed to build the skills, confidence and knowledge of refugee-led organisations and refugee supporting organisations, although most of the materials will be useful to any community group.
Participation requests are a way for communities to work with public bodies to make services better. This resource pack contains a range of guides, tools and templates to help you understand the participation request process, the language and terms that are used, and the process involved.
Planning Democracy is a community-led organisation campaigning to strengthen the voice and influence of the public in the planning and development of Scotland’s land. It provides peer support, training, networking, resources and advice.
If your group is working to improve public services, it may help to know about human learning systems, an alternative approach to public management which embraces the complexity of the real world, and enables us to work effectively in that complexity.
Community mediation is a way of resolving disputes between those who live in the same area or neighbourhood, whether between neighbours, different groups of people or whole areas.
Making Rights Real is a grassroots human rights organisation that supports communities to name and claim their rights.
Developed by the Innovation School at Glasgow School of Art, toolbox uses participatory design methods to help community groups think about and use participation requests to influence public services.
Launched by the Poverty Allliance in 2013, Challenge Poverty Week is an opportunity for us to raise our voices against poverty and unite with others in calling for a just and equal Scotland.
The Rural Exchange provides information for, and gathers the views of, people living and working across Scotland’s rural and island communities with the aim of increasing their voice in both research and policy-making.