This paper examines the local Commissions on the Status of Women (CSW) groups, whose primary task is to shape a women's agenda for the participation in politics at the community level. CSW's now exist in 150 communities across the United States as official advisory boards to general jurisdiction governments. Five questions are explored in this paper: (1) What is gained by viewing the CSW as an agenda building institution?; (2) What is the nature of the policy agenda such institutions promote?; (3) How and why do Commissions vary in agenda building capacity?; (4) Are there issues which Commissions systematically screen out?; and (5) Do CSW's initiate issues not existing on a systematic community agenda? In-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 48 CSW's. Findings reveal that Commissions generally stress a few issues with broad appeal and that they tend to adopt clusters of less generally attractive issues. In some instances Commissions do not simply respond to issues on the systematic agenda of the local community, but will act as a local initiator to actually build a systematic agenda by placing items on the CSW agenda. (Author/RM)