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Foundations and government agencies use community coalitions increasingly as instruments of social policy and program implementation. The rationales and hopes for community coalitions abound with terms such as grassroots, representation, development, and empowerment. This article examines the range and relationship of the conceptual meanings of these terms to explain their consequences on community coalition building. It arranges their differences in conceptual patterns and suggests that community coalitions have their greatest chance of success when their member groups share the same forms of representation and participation and pursue similar forms of empowerment and change. This discussion clarifies the different policy and program purposes that different community coalitions may serve. Thus, the article explains the difficulties with broad coalitions and may assist to make some community coalition building easier and to make all community coalitions more effective.

This article is guided by several premises. First, community coalitions fit with a social ecology perspective of health promotion because they work with multiple domains and promote community change. Second, the community context affects the functioning of coalitions. Third, key leaders are an important part of the social fabric of a community and influence the social ecology of a community; therefore a coalition should include key leaders and influence them and their organizations. The purpose of this article is to advance an understanding of the social ecology of coalitions by describing concepts, variables and results from two national studies and by providing anecdotal evidence and a measure of key leaders from our own work. After briefly defining and describing community coalitions, we: (1) review literature on contextual variables and community coalitions, (2) provide examples of contextual variables influencing community coalition development, and (3) discuss the relationship of key leaders in multiple domains and community coalitions. The article concludes with a discussion of the need for a framework of contextual variables and a promising next step.

Reviews of large‐scale community coalition evaluations suggest that most have not been successful either in involving a broad array of institutions or in meeting their outcome goals. Informed by the literature and by insights from fieldwork, a social‐structural theoretical explanation is offered for this lack of success. To summarize: coalition structures and the concept of community are loosely defined; local structures attempt to cope with problems that have regional, state, national, and international roots; ethnic, class, and racial divisions lead to cooptation; the narrative of past failed interventions creates current problems; organizations with different sizes and institutional affiliations have problems in working together; and the presence of many organizations leads to confused decision‐making processes. In addition, drug and alcohol prevention program funding is dwarfed by the funds of the alcohol and illegal drug industries. Recognizing these issues in advance and focusing interventions can help to alleviate the effects of these structural problems.

Research has found that collaboration is important for family service agencies, and community coalition building is a common form of collaboration. Guided by Community Coalition Action Theory, this article analyzes a community coalition convening around health and housing in a resource-challenged, large Midwestern metropolitan area. Implications for practice are discussed, describing initial lessons learned from the coalition kick-off event for community coalition convening. Using theory to anticipate coalition challenges and barriers, looking beyond simple meeting agenda objectives to identify specific coalition tactics, and asking hard questions about coalition capacity at kick-off are ways to strengthen health and housing interventions within family-based services.

AbstractSince 1997, the United States Congress, through the Drug‐Free Communities (DFC) Support Program, has provided funding for community coalitions to prevent youth substance abuse. This chapter describes lessons learned from working with community drug‐free coalitions and suggests guidelines and resources to assist the evaluator working with DFC‐funded community coalitions.