CSEq April In-Person Gathering: Los Angeles

CSEq held its annual in-person member gathering in April in Los Angeles, co-hosted with Play Equity Fund.

The gathering focused on shared narrative development, timed to CSEq's upcoming visibility through the 2026 World Cup partnership with Nike. Adrianne Wright of ROSIE facilitated the session, working with members to distinguish between narrative elements that work at a national level and elements that are best told locally by individual coalitions.

CSEq represents 700+ organizations across 23 cities, each operating in a distinct local context shaped by different funding landscapes, policy environments, and community needs. The session's goal was to identify a shared narrative framework that member coalitions could use alongside their own local storytelling, rather than a single national message applied uniformly across the network.

This kind of alignment work matters beyond any single moment of visibility. CSEq functions as a coalition of coalitions: its value comes from members sharing infrastructure, data, and learning while retaining ownership of their local work. A national narrative that overrides local context would undercut that model. We are excited to be able to deploy this during the World Cup and beyond!