TransitCenter, CNT, and six LA-based community organizations worked with LA Metro to implement part of the agency’s strategy for working with CBOs. In our new report, Equity in Practice: Strengthening Transit through Community Partnerships, we reflect on what other agency practitioners can learn about community partnerships from LA Metro.

CNT and TransitCenter offered our research expertise and team capacity to the Office of Equity and Race, to aid their implementation of the CBO Partnering Strategy. Our cross-organizational team developed two recommendations from the strategy: a database connecting CBO and LA Metro staff to information about each other and partnership opportunities and a charter process to guide LA Metro-CBO partnerships.

This report describes how we developed those two recommendations. In doing so, it demonstrates the process and form that community-driven agency programs can take and illuminates lessons about CBO-agency relationships.