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by Jean A. Thompson-Ibbeson

Editor’s note: This is one in an occasional series of articles on “Five things you can do to improve…” Earlier articles have appeared in previous issues of Rural Matters in 2012.

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. --Andrew Carnegie

Two friends who live in the same neighborhood run into each other while shopping on Main Street. As they talk, one airs complaints about how hard it is to find certain things after the hardware store closed last year. The other talks about how her children are bored because there are no basketball courts or sports leagues in town. They agree that the town council should do something to attract new businesses or improve the parks. Yet they go their separate ways with their complaints unheard by the right people, and nothing is done to improve residents’ lives.

Has this ever happened in your community?

Improving a community is the responsibility of its leaders—but also of its residents. Often it’s a chicken vs. the egg dilemma: Who should act first and who should do the work? Residents believe their taxes fund institutions to serve the people, but often the institutions aren’t nimble or responsive enough to know what needs they should address.

Responsiveness to citizens’ preferences, concerns and needs is a fundamental part of American democracy. In many situations, the law requires that the needs of a community be studied prior to the development of policies and programs in areas such as land use, transportation and health care planning.

With the economic conditions many urban and rural communities are facing today, it is important that programs and/or organizations have the flexibility to function and adapt to the changing needs of the population served.

Citizen groups, public officials and agency representatives need to secure accurate information about the needs of a community before action can be taken. The following five key things can help justify grants, design new local programs, promote collaboration among local agencies and businesses, and support funders in decision making. These items list concrete ways for the right people and parts of a community to get in the right positions to make changes and improvements.

1. Conduct a formal community-needs assessment. Evaluate the needs of the population served.

As a consequence of demographic change in your community, what was once an appropriate policy or program can now be inappropriate for your current population. The character or mood of a community shifts as a result of the interplay of social, cultural and economic changes.

The needs of different groups in a community are difficult to identify, and they are frequently interrelated. Sometimes people do not express their attitudes and feelings openly, and their needs are not revealed until a crisis occurs. When public concerns correspond with the responsibilities of several agencies, no one agency may identify specific concerns or needs as high priority, and the result may be that no action is taken.

A community-needs assessment is an excellent way to involve the public in problem solving and developing local goals. There is a tendency for people to resist change, frequently because they have inadequate information or because they have not been involved in the decision-making process. An assessment can include the involvement of residents, whereby people not only learn more about the situation, but they also feel that they have contributed to the outcome.

Needs assessments can help local leaders ease the impacts of a decision and can be especially helpful to:

• learn more about the current residents and newcomers in their neighborhoods.
• identify needs for new or expanded public services.
• assess public opinion about the community’s goals and priorities.
• evaluate existing programs and services and planning for improvements.
• provide justifications or explanations for budget and grant requests.
• increase citizens’ understanding of the community’s problems and their effect on people and organizations in the community.
• build the support of residents for public decisions, in that citizens develop a greater sense of ownership through involvement.
• increase residents’ awareness of community planning, including availability of resources.

The goal of a needs assessment is to identify a community’s resources (workers, skills, funds, infrastructure, land, etc.) and potential problems. A simple way to estimate your community’s needs is to simply ask residents their opinions about the development of services within the community, their satisfaction with services, and what particular services are needed. This information can be gathered through interviews with community leaders, public meetings, focus groups, surveys, and reviewing existing information about the community’s needs, issues, assets and resources.

Resources and tools for conducting a community-needs assessment: 

• Rotary Foundation of Rotary International: Community Needs Assessment—Frequently Asked Questions
  www.rotary.org/RIdocuments/en_pdf/mg_cna_faq.pdf
• New Jersey State League of Municipalities: Conducting a Community Needs Assessment
  www.njslom.org/ConductingCommunityNeedsAssessment.html
• Center for Urban Research and Learning and the Department of Psychology at Loyola University, Chicago: A Community Needs Assessment Guide: A Brief Guide on How to Conduct a Needs Assessment
  www.luc.edu/curl/pdfs/A_Community_Needs_Assessment_Guide_.pdf

2. Build your community’s capacity.  Develop a foundation for sustainable, long-term growth.

Community capacity is the “interaction of human, organizational, and social capital existing within a given community that can be leveraged to solve collective problems and improve or maintain the well-being of a given community. It may operate through informal social processes and/or organized efforts by individuals, organizations and the networks of association among them and between them and the broader systems of which the community is a part” (Robert J. Chaskin, Defining Community Capacity: A Framework and Implications from a Comprehensive Community Initiative, Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, 1999).

In other words, a community’s capacity is its own ability to take charge of and make decisions about what happens in the life of its residents and neighbors. One especially important part of community capacity is its members’ ability to appeal to funders and policy-makers as a collective group and not just as individuals.

Capacity building is defined as the “process of developing and strengthening the skills, instincts, abilities, processes and resources that organizations and communities need to survive, adapt and thrive in the fast-changing world” (Ann Philbin, Capacity Building in Social Justice Organizations, Ford Foundation, 1996).

To build your community’s capacity, plan activities at different levels of involvement to accomplish specific goals. Most strategies for building capacity will tend to focus on some combination of four major strategic areas: leadership development; community organizing; organizational development; and fostering collaborative relations among organizations. This is often done under the umbrella of a local governance mechanism that guides the initial planning and implementation before taking on a larger role of speaking and acting on behalf of the neighborhood more broadly.

There is more to capacity building than just training, and it should provide the tools that enable a community’s systems to run more effectively, the processes and procedures to better manage relationships, and give residents the ability to make legal and regulatory changes to enhance their capacities.

Resources and tools for building capacity:

• Wikipedia: Capacity Building
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_building#Local_Capacity_Building_in_Practice
• Defining Community Capacity: A Framework and Implications from a Comprehensive Community Initiative, Robert J. Chaskin, The Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, 1999
  www.chapinhall.org/sites/default/files/old_reports/41.pdf
• National Service Knowledge Network: Five Cs: Strategic Factors for Building Community and Sustaining the Initiative (These factors are based on an examination of 150 years of research and field experience.)
  www.nationalserviceresources.org/five-cs-strategic-factors-building-community-and-sustaining-initiative

3. Implement processes for community change and improvement. Evaluate the community’s capacity to meet its current needs, and build on the community’s strengths to address problems and make the most of opportunities that arise.

Tough issues such as crime and youth unemployment can be addressed with available research and best practices. The challenge is to create healthy families and children, thriving neighborhoods, living-wage jobs and viable economies. To realize specific change and improvements in your community, implement a process to guide the activities that achieve those results. Choosing the appropriate process will help you assess, prioritize and plan; implement targeted actions; change your community’s conditions and systems; achieve widespread change in behavior and risk factors; and improve residents’ health and development.

Resources and tools for implementing processes for change and improvement:

• Solutions for America: The Guide to Civic Problem Solving
  www.solutionsforamerica.org
  This website provides support for implementing 12 Promising Processes or activities that have shown to promote community change and improvement.
• The Community Tool Box: Promising Processes for Community Change and Improvement
  http://ctb.ku.edu/en/promisingapproach/index.aspx
• Innovation Center for Community & Youth Development: Connecting People and Ideas to Create Change
  www.theinnovationcenter.org/documents/highlighted-activity-leading-change

4. Create a strategic and action plan. Once problems are identified, develop a plan to address them.

Strategic and action plans put the community in the best possible position to implement goals and strategies. A plan creates a single set of specific, strategic actions with measureable outcomes that lead to greater public buy-in and a more effective allocation of resources.

For plans to be effective, the community needs to implement strategic plans tailored to its local needs (based on a community-needs assessment). You should both reassess your community’s progress toward the goals/objectives outlined in your plan and consider revisiting your plans to align with the subpopulations, goals, and timelines. As this is done, it’s important to consider the long-term costs and impacts of each change based on your community’s values and resources. Balancing what the community is, what it has, and what it wants to become is essential to creating a healthy community.

Resources and tools for creating a strategic and action plan:

• The Community Tool Box: Outline for Developing Strategic and Action Plans
  http://ctb.ku.edu/en/dothework/tools_tk_content_page_193.aspx
• Community Strategic Plan Guide and Form: A Straightforward Way to Get What You Need, by Sheila A. Selkregg, PhD
  www.commerce.state.ak.us/dca/planning/planning_central/CommunityPlanningResources/CommunityStrategicPlanGuideandForm(USDA2001).pdf

5. Create and maintain collaborations and partnerships. Nurture relationships with national, state and local, public and private organizations, agencies and businesses.

Community-based collaboration is the process by which citizens, agencies, organizations and businesses work together to share information and resources in order to achieve a shared vision. In a time of increasing demands and limited resources, it is almost impossible to accomplish tasks or goals by only relying on one’s own resources. Therefore, partnerships and collaborations offer possibilities for maximizing what a community can accomplish. Common issues and opportunities can be found and acted upon together to prevent duplication of costs and efforts, which may have immediate and long-term, as well as direct and indirect, effects.

For example, seven counties formed a one-stop resource center called the “community-development center.” The center is a collaboration that provides resources on a broader scale to rural communities. When a community contacts the center, the center reviews the issue to be resolved and puts the community in contact with the agency/agencies that can provide those services, then continues to coordinate those efforts throughout the process.

Resources and tools for creating and maintaining collaborations and partnerships:

• University of Rhode Island, Building Community Collaborations: Cooperative Extension Fact Sheets, Community Development #4
  www.uri.edu/ce/faceit/Facts%20Sheets/Community%20Development/cd4.html
• National Service Knowledge Network: Tools and training for volunteer and service programs
  www.nationalserviceresources.org
• How to Build Community Collaboration: It’s amazing how much can be done when it doesn’t matter who gets the credit, attributed to George C. Marshal
  www.communitycollaboration.net/id22.htm

Thompson-Ibbeson is a Rural Development Specialist-Environmental in California for RCAC, the Western RCAP.