This page brings together a selection of guides designed to support multi-actor processes by focusing on the social dimensions of collaboration and change. These resources provide tools, techniques, and frameworks for those working to engage diverse groups and foster meaningful outcomes at individual, organisational, and community levels. Together, they offer insights into how shared goals can be achieved across complex settings, from addressing sustainability challenges to managing professional and collective practice shifts.
As part of the “Supporting Change” section, this page complements the Behaviour Change and Practice Change pages by offering additional resources tailored to collaborative and multi-actor initiatives. While behaviour change focuses on influencing individual actions and practice change addresses collective and systemic shifts, this page highlights the strategies and approaches needed to bring diverse actors together for effective action.
Whether you are looking to initiate collaboration, build trust, or manage participatory processes, the guides here provide a strong foundation for creating inclusive and impactful multi-actor processes.
Facilitating sustainable change processes
Written by the author of this site, this post provides a broad introduction to facilitating collaborative and multi-stakeholder processes. It is an excellent starting point for understanding how to guide diverse groups toward shared goals while managing complexity and fostering trust.
The MSP Guide: How to design and facilitate multi-stakeholder partnerships
This practical guide by Herman Brouwer, Jim Woodhill and colleagues offers a structured approach to designing and facilitating multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs). It introduces a staged process for collaboration, from stakeholder analysis to implementation and learning, supported by guiding principles and field-tested tools. An accompanying MSP Tool Guide provides over 60 participatory methods for planning, reflection, and decision-making. Widely used in development, sustainability, and policy settings, the guide supports inclusive engagement in complex, multi-actor contexts.
A guide to just transitions | He puka arataki whakawhitinga tika
This 2023 guide was created by a New Zealand team to help communities and organisations design just transition processes. Addressing challenges like climate change, employment shifts, and renewable energy transitions, it offers practical tools and methods for inclusive problem-solving. The guide draws on tikanga and mātauranga Māori, featuring case studies of iwi, hapū, and community-led transitions across Aotearoa.
Just transition: A conceptual review
This 2021 paper by Xinxin Wang and Kevin Lo reviews the literature on just transitions, identifying five key themes, including justice frameworks and governance strategies. It calls for more empirical studies rooted in practice and highlights the need to address power dynamics and the inclusion of non-democratic contexts.
Are you co-creating? A critical companion to more inclusive collaboration
This reflective companion guide (2026) supports facilitators working in multi-actor settings to examine assumptions about participation, power, and knowledge. Rather than offering tools, it provides principles, questions, and field stories to help practitioners attend to positionality, reciprocity, and decision-making across the full arc of collaborative processes, including before and after formal workshops.
Participatory Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation of Multi-Stakeholder Platforms in Integrated Landscape Initiatives
Koen Kusters et al. (2017) propose a participatory method for planning, monitoring, and evaluating multi-stakeholder platforms. The method is organised around three key activities: looking ahead, looking inward, and looking back, enabling adaptive governance in complex landscape initiatives.
Following the rabbit: a field guide to systemic design
Roya Damabi’s 2016 guide supports systemic designers in leading projects from concept to implementation. It includes detailed guidance on planning workshops, managing client relations, and navigating systemic design processes.
Power Dynamics in Multi-Stakeholder Processes: A Balancing Act
This 2013 publication synthesises findings from an action research programme on power in multi-stakeholder processes. Drawing on 12 cases across eight countries, it explores strategies for balancing power dynamics in collaborative development initiatives. This is hosted on the larger Wageningen Knowledge Creation portal – Multi-Stakeholder Processes which aims to enable practitioners worldwide to collaborate and share knowledge, experiences and strategies.
The Barefoot Guide to Working with Organisations and Social Change
This practical guide provides resources for leaders and facilitators to help organisations develop in more human and effective ways. It includes stories, tools, and exercises to support organisational learning and social change initiatives. You can also access a growing library of exercises, case studies, tools, readings, handouts, diagrams etc. on the website.
The weave: participatory process design guide for strategic sustainable development
Developed in 2011 by Tracy Meisterheim and colleagues, this guide offers a framework for designing participatory processes that drive transformative, long-lasting change. It outlines five overlapping phases: Exploration, Commitment, Design, Engagement, and Integration.
The community toolbox
Maintained by the University of Kansas, this extensive online resource provides pages of practical guidance for promoting community health and development. It includes step-by-step guides, examples, and training materials for tasks like leadership, strategic planning, and evaluation.
Tools of Change: Proven Methods for Promoting Health, Safety and Environmental Citizenship
This Canadian website focuses on community-based social marketing. It offers case studies, tools, and a planning guide to help practitioners design programs that promote sustainable and healthy behaviours.
Building Resilience in Rural Communities: Toolkit
This toolkit highlights 11 resilience concepts critical to enhancing individual and community resilience. Designed for program coordinators, it provides ideas for integrating resilience concepts into new and existing initiatives.
Understanding and influencing behaviours: a review of social research, economics and policy making in Defra
This discussion paper highlights how economic and social research has informed policy-making within Defra. It showcases case studies of translating behaviour insights into effective policy interventions. Whilst not an exhaustive review, the paper demonstrates how research and analysis is helping to understand behaviour, how this shapes our thinking about policy development and informs the choice of interventions adopted. Another useful Defra report is A framework for pro-environmental behaviours.
Fostering Sustainable Behavior
This site by Doug McKenzie-Mohr was developed for people who design programs to foster sustainable behavior, to provide information that can enhance the success of their efforts. The site consists of six resources:an online guide which illustrates how to use community-based social marketing, searchable databases of articles, downloadable reports, graphics, and case studies on fostering sustainable behavior; and a listserv for sharing information and asking questions of others.
International Association of Public Participation (IAP2)
IAP2 is an association of members who seek to promote and improve the practice of public participation in relation to individuals, governments, institutions, and other entities that effect the public interest in nations throughout the world. This page provides links to a toolbox and a useful typology around public participation.
Future Search
This structured three-day planning process, developed by Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff, supports collaborative action in complex situations. Key principles include exploring the wider system, finding common ground, and treating problems as information rather than immediate action items.
More information on approaches, tools and methodologies can be found through the linked LfS pages on conceptual modelling, systems thinking and systemic design. Other related pages point to resources on related topics such as managing participation – including marginalized voices, facilitation tools and reflective practice. Allied topics include supporting constructive practice change, and particularly the page on strategic planning.