Community Organizers
Ensure Long-Term Viability
Key Actions
Key Action 1
Celebrate success
Celebrate key milestones with partners
Work with utilities to highlight key milestones through shared communications, such as blog posts, podcasts, press releases, and joint announcements. These materials can showcase your partnership and your organization’s role in supporting solutions.
Encourage partners, including elected officials, universities, and non-profit organizations, to share these stories through their networks to amplify visibility. Joint communications can help strengthen awareness of the program, increase community trust, and demonstrate the value of collaboration.
You can also help ensure that community contributors are recognized. Work with your utility to acknowledge local organizations, community leaders, volunteers, and residents who help make progress possible. Acknowledging these contributions strengthens relationships and demonstrates that success is a collective effort.
Share success stories
Use storytelling to build momentum and encourage participation in lead service line replacement (LSLR) efforts. Collect and share success stories from residents who have had their service line replaced, highlighting their experiences through short videos, photos, or written testimonials. These stories may showcase improved water quality, increased confidence, or positive interactions with utility staff.
Work with your local elected officials or utility to feature these stories across multiple platforms, including social media, community newsletters, local press, and city, town, and utility websites, to reach a wide range of audiences.
Spotlight residents from different neighborhoods and backgrounds to ensure that outreach reflects the full community and builds trust across groups. You can also guide your utility on working with trusted local voices, such as community leaders, faith-based organizations, or neighborhood groups, to help share and amplify these stories, strengthening government credibility and increasing community participation in the program.
Toolbox
LSLR success stories
Key Action 2
Document and share what works
Community organizers play an important role in documenting and sharing lessons learned throughout the lead service line replacement (LSLR) process. By partnering with your water utility and local government, you can help capture successful outreach strategies, community feedback, implementation challenges, and program outcomes from multiple perspectives. Collecting and reflecting on what worked and what did not can strengthen collaboration, improve program effectiveness, and preserve valuable knowledge for future efforts.
Share lessons learned
Share lessons learned by publishing reports, case studies, or hosting debrief sessions and learning exchanges with other community organizations, community leaders, utilities, and local agencies. This information can be published on the city or town, utility, and partner organization websites and shared jointly on social media to present a united front.
Openly sharing experiences strengthens collaboration, surfaces common challenges, and promotes shared solutions. Documenting both successes and setbacks ensures future programs can build on proven strategies, helps other communities replicate successful approaches, avoid common challenges, and advance lead service line (LSL) efforts more efficiently and effectively.
Create replicable models
Develop tools and templates that others can easily adapt. This may include messaging guides, storytelling campaigns, resident ambassador programs, and interactive mapping tools, into clear, adaptable templates or how-to guides. Providing examples of outreach materials, forms, and planning resources can help other communities replicate successful approaches more quickly and consistently.
Making these resources publicly available through toolkits, shared drives, or online libraries can extend their impact and support broader adoption. In some cases, these materials can also be adapted into training or service offerings to help sustain ongoing lead service line replacement efforts.
Build peer-learning networks
Connect with other community organizations, utilities, advocates, and community leaders working on similar challenges. Participating in conferences, webinars, peer exchanges, and learning cohorts provides opportunities to share lessons learned, identify effective strategies, and address common barriers. Over time, these relationships can evolve into regional or national networks that exchange resources, share best practices, and support one another in advancing lead service line replacement and related community priorities.
Archive tools and resources
Partner with utilities to preserve outreach materials, community feedback, templates, training resources, and lessons learned. Storing these resources in shared repositories or online toolkits helps retain institutional knowledge, reduce duplication of work, and support future outreach efforts. Publishing key materials on your organization’s website can also improve public access to information and serve as a resource for other organizers seeking to engage with their utilities or local governments on similar issues.
Toolbox
Key Action 3
Actively pursue and secure funding
Building trusted relationships (see Principle 3 ) with residents, supporting outreach efforts, developing educational materials, and coordinating with utilities and local leaders can be resource-intensive. Securing dedicated funding can help your organization maintain consistent engagement, build organizational capacity, and support long-term participation in the replacement program.
Plan for long-term sustainability
Because lead service line replacement (LSLR) programs are multi-year efforts, community organizers will need a long-term funding strategy that supports engagement activities. Consider pursuing a mix of federal, state, local, and philanthropic funding and financing to build a stable and diversified funding base.
Potential funding sources include:
- Individual and recurring giving: Build relationships with people closest to your organization, including board members, friends, and volunteers. Establish a recurring giving program to encourage consistent support.
- Grants: Research and apply for grants, but understand this is often a longer-term strategy that may take months to yield results.
- Corporate partnerships: Engage local businesses for matching gifts or corporate social responsibility funding. Tailor outreach to highlight mutual benefits, such as community impact and brand visibility.
- Online platforms: Use digital tools to expand reach, including crowdfunding platforms, social media campaigns, and QR codes in outreach materials.
Build on your success to address other community challenges
Being involved in the lead service line (LSL) program can create new opportunities for community organizers to expand their role in addressing water and public health challenges. By demonstrating expertise in community engagement, outreach, and education, organizers may secure contracts with utilities, cities, or other agencies to support future initiatives. Community organizations can also build their capacity to pursue state and federal funding opportunities, including grants from agencies such as the EPA and USDA, to support work on drinking water, wastewater, environmental health, resilience, and other community priorities. These partnerships and funding sources can help sustain community engagement efforts beyond a single project.