We recognized that we could not simply ask people to innovate in a vacuum. To solve for this, we used a Panel-to-Dialogue approach. Each working session was preceded by a panel of national leaders who defined the macro-level challenge or provided examples that could help jumpstart the dialogue phase. These panels acted as strategic prompts, grounding the room in at topic before asking the tables to solve for it.

We designed the table discussions to give participants an opportunity to gain insights from their peers and to provide us with significant qualitative data we could synthesize across the different discussions. We intentionally seated practitioners from different stages of capital deployment together to break down professional silos within their area of expertise.

We instructed table facilitators to steer conversations away from safe, expected answers and push for fresh examples and ideas. The goal was to capture both the ground-level reality that is often missed from the national perspective and pair that with potential solutions to those identified barriers. This intentionally structured model forced the room to move past venting about symptoms and to begin building concrete, pressure-tested systemic solutions.

The Summit’s dialogue groups were tasked with three distinct tasks, each with a specific objective:

1 Getting to the Cause, Not the Symptom (Barriers):

• The Panel Prompt: The opening panel, “Setting the Stage,” mapped the systemic shifts and the scarcity of government resources. Leaders in finance and housing made it clear: the old funding flows are not coming back. They defined the macro-level “new normal.”
• The Dialogue Group’s Objective: We asked practitioners to drop the polished, grant-report language and focus on the reality on the ground. The goal was to identify secondary impacts and not just focus on the loss of money. Participants dissected how the new pressures were forcing them to abandon old habits and assumptions.

2. What’s the ‘New Normal’ We’d Want (Innovations):

• The Panel Prompt: The “Imagination & Collaboration” panel explored what can work when we stop feeling constrained by the system by highlighting programs that operate in ways that could help inform options to redesign the system. It showcased leaders who were already rewriting the playbook and operating outside traditional funding constraints.
• The Dialogue Group’s Objective: The tables shifted to brainstorming systems change at the community level. Participants were asked to design new models from scratch based on discussion prompts like: If you weren’t constrained by grant deliverables, what core business principle would you build on and who would you build on it with? They focused on removing local systemic barriers, such as zoning codes or fragmented ecosystems, that block progress regardless of funding levels. The conversations asked participants to look for ways to build partnerships with those who benefit from the work of community development.

3. What Gets Us Closer to Perfect (Prioritizing Solutions):

• The Panel Prompt: The closing “Implementation & Opportunities” panel focused squarely on execution and identifying quick wins that don’t require an Act of Congress to achieve.
• The Dialogue Group’s Objective: In the final phase, the dialogue tables narrowed their ideas to a short list of actions that could realistically be advanced locally within the following 6–12 months and what the first step towards each could be for them once they returned home after the Summit. Each table also began to derisk one idea by naming the most likely reasons it could stall over the next three years so that risks could be accounted for early rather than later on in the process .