How the local Trauma group failed to have trauma informed meetings. : https://www.madinamerica.com/2...-mongering-round-ii/
How coalitions in general tend to beat up advocates, why your meeting dynamics are not unique:
https://www.madinamerica.com/2...k-damages-advocates/
How to do better science based public input. https://www.madinamerica.com/2.../service-user-input/
Hint: stop having meetings and expecting low power groups to get any kind of useful recognition from high power hosts. The meeting itself is the problem.
Instead, do surveys, focus groups, one on one conversations, design thinking workshops, work with civil discourse groups who have a solid process (usually), work with stakeholders in multiple ways. Inviting people to a meeting is one piece of about 20 required for good input.
Our agency has an acid test now for joining coalitions. 1) Are they willing to share resources with our organization? 2) Will they shift their plan based on what we say? 3) Do they have a plan to allow conflict or do they just try to hush any disagreements that come up? IF NO to any of those, we don't join.
We get plenty of invites to with all 3 NOs. Our local trauma coalition (and many other since then) asked us to work for free, wouldn't share resources, wouldn't change any plans based on our input, and wouldn't allow our groups to settle any kind of conflict.
On the other hand, the local BikeWyco Coalition is helping our people earn free bikes, they are listening to our feedback, and they have allowed us to disagree. Same with other groups we actually DO work with.