Healthier Communities Start with Community-led Change

Shift Health Accelerator is a national network of community leaders advancing bold, local visions for well-being by helping communities and institutions shape resources for health and healing.

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Why Shift Health Accelerator?

We support communities in translating their lived experience and vision into bold, actionable strategies. Our value lies in making community-led change possible—by helping partners navigate complexity, build trust, and realign resources.

Whether we’re facilitating co-governance structures, advising funders and health institutions, or designing participatory resourcing initiatives, our work centers the leadership, wisdom, and long-term vision of community stewards

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Who We Help

funders & philanthropy

Redefine risk and return by placing resources in community hands.

healthcare systems + institutions

Transform your institutional assets via shared governance and ownership.

Community
Leaders + coalitions

Turn lived experience into a plan funders and institutions will back.

Collaborative
Partners

Accelerate impact through field building, new narratives and collective practice spaces.
Learn More

explore our Participatory Investing toolkit

This toolkit explores frameworks and tools to shape approaches for participatory, community-rooted investing in the health sector
explore the PI toolkit

Toolkit Modules

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Community Rooted Finance

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Scarcity & Abundance

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Trust Assessment Rubric

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Cooperation Exercise

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Feedback Loops Exercise

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Community Rooted Diligence Assessment

Centering Compassion new

Centering
Compassion

What We Do

We partner with communities, funders, and institutions to co-create pathways for equitable systems change. Shift aligns the right partners, sets clear decision rules, locks a timeline, and builds the operational muscle to deliver outcomes, not reports.

Discover Our Programs

Community Governance + Facilitation

Community Governance + Facilitation

We support community-led initiatives to build structures for governance, power-sharing, and aligned decision-making—whether in coalitions, collaboratives, or community-based strategy.

Participatory
Resourcing

Participatory
Resourcing

We design and steward funding and investment initiatives that place decision-making in community hands. From participatory grantmaking to anchor institution initiatives and community investment strategies, we help democratize how capital flows.

Field Building +
Innovation


Field Building + Innovation

Through bold ideas and untested models, we help define what equity, accountability, and wealth-building can look like—especially where health, funding, and community ownership intersect. We create frameworks and narratives that push the field forward.

Capacity Building
+ LEARNING

Capacity Building + Learning

We develop tools, learning experiences, and communities of practice that help partners implement trust-based, equity-driven strategies—from training cohorts to toolkits rooted in lived experience and deep partnership.

Our Success Snapshot

$500K+

distributed through community governance and participatory funding initiatives

$20M+

secured in partnership with local leaders pitching health equity initiatives rooted in local priorities and vision

6+

co-design efforts centering community co-design and governance of local funds and coalitions

25

communities served supporting community-led visioning and resourcing strategy

Consultation

Learn how Shift Health Accelerator Can Help

Case Studies

Real People’s Fund

2024-2025 (ongoing)

Florida Center for Thriving Commuinities

2025

Reimaging Equity Series

may-july 2024

Healthcare Learning & Action Network

2022 – summer 2023

NRPA

2025

Collaborative Fund

2024
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What’s New at Shift Accelerator?

Shift and BARHII collaborate to discuss participatory investing

Check out our recent discussion for the National Association of City and County Health Officials (NACCHO) annual conference!
Read More >
  • 30 June
  • / Participatory Investing

Continuing Our Journey with Real People’s Fund: Strengthening Community Governance and Power

We’re excited to share that we recently completed our second annual strategy retreat with the REAL People’s Fund (RPF)
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  • 6 March
  • / Community Governance

Applying nature’s wisdom: trust building in health equity spaces

Building trust takes willingness. The perceived benefits of engaging with another in trust-building must outweigh the perceived risks.
Read More >
  • 29 January
  • / Trust Building
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Testimonials

Health Care Without Harm held a contract with Shift Accelerator for 3 years, and during that time, our team's knowledge and skills in the area of equitable engagement between anchor institutions and community partners, power sharing, and strategies for institutions to co-design project plans with community partners, increased substantially. We felt like we had the whole Shift team, with their broad diversity of skills and experiences, supporting us to be creative, dig a little deeper, improve our work, and always, always, center the community. Jen, Lisa and Sonia were always willing to share their perspectives, engage in conversation, help craft and review our reports, and provide examples of success from their work across the country, data and relevant resources, and training when we needed it the most. And the value of their flexibility with us as we were charting our own path cannot be overstated. Our work has advanced to a level that we would not have achieved without them by our side.
Lucia SayreDirector
Place-based Initiatives, Practice Greenhealth, Healthcare Without Harm
Health Care Without Harm held a contract with Shift Accelerator for 3 years, and during that time, our team's knowledge and skills in the area of equitable engagement between anchor institutions and community partners, power sharing, and strategies for institutions to co-design project plans with community partners, increased substantially. We felt like we had the whole Shift team, with their broad diversity of skills and experiences, supporting us to be creative, dig a little deeper, improve our work, and always, always, center the community. Jen, Lisa and Sonia were always willing to share their perspectives, engage in conversation, help craft and review our reports, and provide examples of success from their work across the country, data and relevant resources, and training when we needed it the most. And the value of their flexibility with us as we were charting our own path cannot be overstated. Our work has advanced to a level that we would not have achieved without them by our side.
Lucia SayreDirector
Place-based Initiatives, Practice Greenhealth, Healthcare Without Harm