Co-Creating What Comes Next

Co-creation is a collaborative and iterative process that asks people what they want the future of diversity, equity, and inclusion to offer them and synthesizes those findings into actionable recommendations. It is human-centered and data driven.

We think about co-creation in three phases: sparking meaningful conversations—making those conversations sustainable and replicable by offering insights and resources to scale them; and synthesizing our findings to spark addition conversations, reach a shared understanding an d convey that to policy makers.

Navigating Change: Practical Guides for Organizations

Organizations across sectors face unprecedented pressure to rethink their approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion—even as they work to attract talent, serve diverse communities, and maintain organizational integrity. The path forward requires neither abandonment of core values nor rigid adherence to terminology that has lost public support. It requires co-creating what's next with the people who matter most to your organization.

These guides offer a different approach grounded in stakeholder engagement, informed by comprehensive national research, and designed to help organizations protect what matters while building broader understanding and support.

Stakeholder Engagement Guide for Corporations

Designed for: Companies navigating external pressure, legal complexity, and the need to remain competitive while maintaining authentic commitments to their values.

Corporations face a unique set of challenges: balancing legal frameworks across multiple jurisdictions, meeting the expectations of diverse employee bases, and protecting business fundamentals from political volatility. This guide provides a roadmap for engaging your key stakeholders—employees, customers, investors, and community partners—to understand what diversity, equity, and inclusion mean to them, and to build sustainable approaches that create genuine belonging rather than division.

What You'll Find:

• Research insights that inform strategic decision-making

• Framework for identifying and engaging your stakeholder ecosystem

• Practical tools including an unbranded video to facilitate stakeholder conversations

• Sample questions for meaningful engagement

• Process for synthesizing learnings and translating them into action

Stakeholder Engagement Guide for NGOs

Designed for: Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working to advance their mission while navigating external pressure and maintaining community trust.

NGOs operate at the intersection of mission and community—accountable to donors, boards, staff, and the people they serve. This guide recognizes that protecting and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion within nonprofit contexts requires alignment between organizational values and community expectations. By centering stakeholder voices, NGOs can build approaches that strengthen rather than threaten organizational stability, and that deepen rather than erode community trust.

What You'll Find:

• Research insights that ground your stakeholder engagement strategy

• Guide to mapping your stakeholder landscape

• Methods for facilitating authentic conversations with diverse stakeholders

• Sample questions tailored to nonprofit contexts

• Frameworks for aligning stakeholder input with mission advancement

Both guides are designed to help organizations move beyond reactive responses and toward proactive, values-aligned strategies that work in today's complex environment. They provide insulation from political attacks, protect organizational integrity, and generate ideas rooted in what your stakeholders actually care about.

Partnership with the American Association for State and Local History

As the United States approached its 250th anniversary, a complete and accurate understanding of American history—in all its complexity—was necessary. NxtLevel partnered with the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) to ensure that history remains a vital part of public discourse, and that the conversations we have about that history are inclusive, community-driven, and reflective of the full American experience. Together, we identified several history organizations to help their local community shape how our nation remembers its past and envisions its future.

The community conversations held during the pilot project proven to be a powerful way to connect neighbors to one another and to strengthen the bonds between history organizations and those they serve. AASLH and NxtLevel have joined forces to leverage the key role history organizations play in repairing civic fabric by providing a guide for local organizations to host community conversations that can help enhance civic practice now and in the years ahead.

The Building the Next 250 Years guide provides tested logistical recommendations and flexible discussion topics to give history organizations of all kinds a foundation for facilitating an effective community conversation. We hope that by asking community members thought-provoking questions—What are this community’s shared values? How are those values rooted in the community’s history? Is there a gap between those values and reality?—and encouraging them to engage with and listen deeply to one another, participants will draw lessons from the past 250 years and help shape the next 250.