From Shared Values to Shared Ground: Advancing Collaboration on Faith-Based Lands
The Community Housing Transformation Centre (CHTC), in partnership with Evangel Hall Mission, brought together faith-based organizations, nonprofit housing providers and development actors to explore how faith-owned land could contribute to community and affordable housing. Across Canada, faith communities are making increasingly consequential decisions about land and property at the same time that nonprofit housing organizations are navigating an acute housing crisis, financing pressures and complex development environments. While technical resources exist to support these conversations, this project recognized that successful partnership depends on something equally important: the relationships between the people and organizations involved. Sayid Consulting was engaged to design and facilitate From Shared Values to Shared Ground, an intentional cross-sector convening in Toronto focused on understanding different realities, surfacing tensions and exploring what meaningful collaboration could look like.
The Community Housing Transformation Centre (CHTC) is a national organization in Canada that acts as a catalyst for the growth and sustainability of the community housing sector. It provides grants, tools and services to non-profit housing organizations, housing co-ops, federations and governments to help them preserve and expand housing stock.
Evangel Hall Mission is a community service agency that supports individuals experiencing poverty, homelessness and social isolation for over a century. The mission provides meals, shelter, clothing and holistic support services to help clients achieve stability and better tomorrows.
The Challenge
The challenge wasn’t simply bringing different organizations together. It was helping people who operate from very different realities learn how to work together.
Faith communities, nonprofit housing providers and development actors may share a commitment to community wellbeing, but they do not necessarily share the same language, governance structures, financial realities, decision-making processes or understanding of land.
The project surfaced tensions around financial viability and mission, power and decision-making, long-term stewardship of land, trust and representation. Participants also described the risks of smaller organizations and less-heard voices being excluded from decisions even when those decisions ultimately affect the communities they serve.
At the centre of the conversation was a recurring question:
How do you move from a shared desire to do good to relationships strong enough to actually build something together?
The project intentionally resisted the pressure to rush toward deals or agreements. The goal was first to create the conditions in which collaboration could become possible.
Our Approach
Our approach treated relationship-building as part of the infrastructure of collaboration, not something separate from the “real work.”
- Designing with participants, not for them: Before finalizing the session, we invited participants to share what success would look like, the tensions they were navigating, what others might misunderstand about their work and what would help them participate fully. Their input directly shaped the agenda, allowing the gathering to respond to lived realities rather than facilitator assumptions.
- Beginning with people before positions: Rather than opening with presentations or organizational mandates, participants began through relational exercises, including paired conversations and reflection. The design helped participants encounter one another beyond professional titles before entering more complex conversations about power, land, development and partnership.
- Making differences discussable: Through facilitated small-group conversations, participants explored what they shared, where their approaches differed, how those differences could complicate collaboration and how those same differences might strengthen it. The conversations surfaced dynamics around trust, power, representation and communication without requiring the group to immediately resolve them.
- Building a shared picture of the system: A collective timeline exercise invited participants to map how faith-based housing work had evolved, including early experimentation, emerging partnerships and current “headwinds.” One critical tension became especially visible: Return on Investment versus Return on Mission.
- Moving from connection toward possibility: The session progressed intentionally from connection → shared context → deeper reflection → possibility. Participants were ultimately invited to consider what collaboration would require, what could happen next and what relationships or conversations needed to continue. The facilitation was designed to create movement without forcing premature consensus or commitments.
The Impact
A room of people working on similar challenges began seeing themselves as part of something larger.
By the end of the convening, participants demonstrated strong alignment around housing as a means of supporting people and communities while developing a clearer understanding of the different realities shaping each sector. The conversations surfaced both the relational conditions required for collaboration and the structural barriers that could prevent it.
Perhaps most importantly, the conversation began shifting from isolated organizational efforts toward shared responsibility and collective action.
Participants identified opportunities to:
- sustain relationships through continued communication and convening;
- create stronger coordination between organizations doing similar work;
- explore collective advocacy and different partnership models;
- broaden participation to organizations and perspectives not yet represented;
- develop shared language and evidence that can speak to faith communities, boards, funders and decision-makers; and
- continue exploring how mission, financial viability and stewardship can coexist rather than being treated as competing objectives.
The project demonstrated that collaboration does not begin with an agreement. It begins with the conditions that allow people to understand one another well enough to imagine what they might do together.
As the session report concluded, participants showed alignment in purpose, awareness of structural and relational challenges, and a clear interest in working more collaboratively marking a shift from individual efforts toward shared responsibility.
Client Feedback
Manal and the team at Sayid Consulting are true experts in their craft.
They were an absolute pleasure to work with on our workshop. During our initial conversations, Manal was intentional in asking the right questions to help us best explain our project. She listened more than she spoke which enabled her to clearly understand our intent and develop a process that aligned with our values and goals. On the day of the workshop, we walked into a room, designed by Ayoub, that was welcoming, strategic, and resourced. During the session, there were ample prompts to keep participants engaged and the conversation flowing. Through this, I was in awe of Manal’s ability to give people the space they need to speak while kindly keeping their space in check with respect to the larger group.
Within a few days of the session, we received a draft report that included photos, summary, and quotes. It captured beautifully what we were exploring in the session and how we wanted to move forward. In addition to the report, she curated well mapped social media prompts.
I highly recommend working with Sayid Consulting if you are looking for professional facilitators who lead with experience, knowledge, keen interest, and compassion. I genuinely look forward to a future opportunity where I may work with her team again.
Dawn Campbell, Development Manager - Ontario
Community Housing Transformation Centre