Rooted in Trust: Rev. Frank Jackson, Jr. on Building Community Engagement That Lasts
Spotlight on success: March is our masterclass in community engagement. Rather than simply saying it matters, we’re showcasing the actual impact such efforts can make, from utility-led advisory structures and community organizing to regional partnership strategies and consumer advocacy. Each spotlight edition examines a different approach and the practical principles behind it. Don’t miss the step-by-step playbook for replicating similar programs in your organization!
When programs move faster than trust, they don't land. Rev. Frank Jackson, Jr. on why the slow road is the only road.
Rev. Frank Jackson, Jr. doesn’t start with programs. He starts with people.
His gift for leadership is rooted in generations of community organization. Growing up in a family where caring for others and their community was a way of life, Frank traces his drive for change and progress back to one person: his grandmother.
Detroit, years ago. A house where the door was always open. His grandmother inside, part entrepreneur, part counselor, part anchor of reason for the entire neighborhood. People came to her for everything: advice, opportunity, direction. Not because she had a formal title, but because she had something harder to build and easier to lose; trust.
That early blueprint never really left him. It just evolved—through a legal career in Orange County, through volunteer leadership, through a slow and unexpected call into ministry. At every step along the way, Frank’s knack for building connection and community shone through. Eventually, it led him here: at the intersection of faith, community, and energy, where creating an understanding of the work is possibly more important and challenging than the work itself.
“You’ve got to engage and know the pulse of the community that you're working in,” he says. “That’s the biggest step. And there has to be transparency, you’ve got to build trust.”
Simple enough to say. Much harder to do.
As the CEO and Building a Better Community Director of Village Solutions Foundation (VSF), Frank puts his philosophy into stark action. The organization focuses on connecting smaller faith communities access resources, funding, and energy programs that historically have only been within the reach of their “mega” counterparts.
The church in Hawthrone is a prime example of this work. It is being reimagined as a resilience center, part gathering place, part energy hub. What began as a community solar project has shifted with the tides of federal funding, evolving into something more durable: a space where a “Green Team” of students, congregants, and young adults are trained in energy literacy and climate resilience.
And then there’s the longer game. An energy education platform through VSF’s Ambassador Program, designed to reach students as early as fifth grade, with pathways for parents and teachers alongside them. A curriculum built not just to inform, but to normalize—so the next generation grows up fluent in systems that once felt distant.
Every project, every partnership, centers on a single idea: smaller faith communities should have access to the same resources, funding, and opportunities that larger institutions have long taken for granted.
Because for too long, they haven’t.
That gap isn’t about interest. It’s about structure. Capacity. The unseen, procedural barriers that keep willing communities on the outside looking in.
Frank’s work is about changing that from the inside out.
The Slow Road
Most programs move fast. Timelines, funding cycles, quarterly goals all create a kind of urgency that feels productive, using that pressure to sway community buy-in without actually creating any true understanding of the program. Change now. Progress now.
Frank doesn’t move that way. In the instance of the Hawthorne church, the planned community solar project had to pivot after federal funding changed, which required a good deal of explaining to the community members and congregation. Frank knew this was time and effort well spent to garner deeper engagement in the long run.
“It’s taken us from August to now—almost six months—to get to the point where our meetings are not full of ‘whys’ and ‘how comes’.”
Six months. Not to launch. Not to scale. Just to reach understanding.
Because in the communities he works with, particularly within Black and Latino churches, trust has to be earned, tested, and protected.
Which is why Frank doesn’t start with the congregation. He starts with the pulpit.
“If a pastor says it from the pulpit, it’s gonna be gospel,” he explains. “But if the pastor says something… and it doesn’t come to fruit, now that the pastor has an issue with what’s coming out of his mouth.”
If there’s a single insight that anchors Frank’s approach, it’s this: trust already exists. You just have to know where to find it. In faith communities, that trust lives with the pastor. They’re the first call when something breaks. The sounding board when decisions need to be made. The voice people listen to when it matters.
So Frank is happy to play the long game in the name of authenticity, spending months educating pastors, walking through programs, testing what’s realistic and useful, and what will actually deliver. Only then does anything reach the congregation.
To him, this slow roll is true stewardship and part of his role as a community leader.
Through Village Solutions Foundation, he trains pastors and ministry teams on energy programs, tools, and resources, equipping them not just to refer, but to answer, guide, and filter out what doesn’t hold up.
What’s Getting Lost in Translation
From the outside, many energy and community programs look solid. Well-funded. Thoughtfully designed. Full of potential. But step a little closer, and the gaps start to show.
For instance, faith communities and organizations are often treated as access points—places to deploy programs, hit participation targets, check engagement boxes. The relationship is transactional, and everyone can feel it.
“Don’t come to me a week before the election, you’re not getting in,” Frank says to candidates who eschew his congregation until the eleventh hour of an election cycle. He views this approach as disingenuous and lacking the intention for meaningful change that he knows is necessary.
There are structural issues, too. Smaller churches, often the most embedded in their communities, have historically been locked out of funding simply because they lack the administrative infrastructure to qualify. For years, that meant resources flowed elsewhere.
Frank sees that barrier and has effectively worked around it, building partnerships to help churches establish the legal and organizational footing they needed to participate fully.
A Model Worth Building On
For all its complexity, VSF’s approach comes back to a few deceptively simple ideas.
Start with trust and protect it at all costs.
Invest the time before you ask for participation.
Treat community partners as partners, not pathways.