By the Center for Policy, Research, and Evaluation
Reframing Advisory Boards with a Responsive and Sustaining Lens
When you hear about advisory boards, a certain image may come to mind. You may imagine high-powered corporations with people sitting around a long, mahogany conference table in a room with floor to ceiling windows. The phrase may connote ideas of power and unequal balances, with members who are removed from the impact of their decisions. If there are youth on these boards, they are mainly figure heads, incapable of enacting change or swaying votes in favor of other youth whose interests they represent. This research brief seeks to reframe the aforementioned imagery.
In this brief, we discuss the critical importance of engaging an advisory board that includes the communities most affected by the research or evaluation project. Our team at the Center for Policy, Research, and Evaluation at NYU Metro Center studies education, so our advisory boards typically include youth, families, educators, and staff from community-based organizations. In this framing, advisory boards are interwoven throughout each stage of the study, enhancing the research design, data collection, analysis, dissemination and ensuring the project reflects the strengths and needs of the community.
As a team committed to racial equity and justice for young people and their families, we believe in employing research practices that prioritize the lived experiences and uplift the voices of the communities we work with. We often partner with community-based organizations, youth groups, parent leadership organizations, and school districts to conduct participatory action research and evaluation. We co-present with these partners in community-centered activities such as webinars, workshops, and community forums. Through this approach, we seek to counteract a long history of researchers using marginalized communities to advance their agendas, with no or little accountability to positive change in those communities.
In this research brief, we highlight specific lessons and stories from our previous and current projects that engaged advisory boards. First, we highlight the importance of advisory boards and demonstrate how they add value. Then, we offer a step-by-step guide to planning for advisory boards, recruitment, and ongoing engagement. We conclude with recommendations for community members, grantmakers, CBO staff, and researchers.