What is this workbook?
This is a workbook for community leaders and citizens who want to:
■ Improve the ability of individuals, organizations, businesses, and government in their community to come together, learn, make well-reasoned decisions about the community’s present and future, and work together to carry out those decisions—that is, to build their community’s capacity.
■ Find ways to set goals as they do this work, make sure they are actually moving toward these goals, and celebrate their progress.
What is in this workbook?
This workbook can be used by groups of citizens, working either alone or assistance, to help
identify:
■ What is community capacity building?
■ Why should we care about community capacity building?
■ How do we know community capacity building when we see it?
■ How can we measure—and celebrate—our community’s growing capacity as we build it?
Which communities need to build their capacity?
1) Full Tilt Communities: Some rural communities know exactly what they want—better jobs, growing businesses, a healthier environment, a new town hall, higher quality schools, or simply for their children to have a real option to grow up and stay (employed) in the community. But they don’t know enough—or disagree—about the best way to get there. Or the same few folks do all the work, and they are getting tired.
2) Gridlock Communities: Other rural communities make no decisions over many years because of stubborn, divisive, long-standing fights between opposed “camps” over what to do—how land is being used, whether more “development” is the answer or the problem, who should make the decisions, and the like.
3) Trojan Horse Communities: Some rural communities that seem prosperous are actually threatened by too much change too quickly—or by the lack of change. Perhaps an avalanche of rich, newcomer, part-time residents suddenly have too much local influence. Or maybe the local “old guard” establishment refuses to identify or tap the potential talents and contributions of younger, low-income or minority residents in determining the community’s future.
4) Ghost Town Communities: Still other rural communities have given up trying to do anything because too many jobs and people have left, local energy is sapped, and nobody seems to care.
No matter if your community is on this list or if you have some other situation that frustrates your ability to keep going, you have a community capacity problem. You can only benefit if you work to build your community’s capacity.
Why is it important to measure community capacity building?
This is important because when citizens work together to improve their community, it may take a lot of groundwork before you see any tangible results from your decisions. A lot of the steps that your citizens and organizations might take to build capacity take time, and may seem “fuzzy” and intangible to you, to other citizens in the community—and to the outside world.
And unless you can see and feel progress, folks in your community—and the people outside whom you ask to support you—may give up.
We think that the best thing this workbook has to offer is a “menu” of actual measures that groups of citizens can choose from to gauge their progress as they build their community’s capacity.
The menu of measures we offer here can help make your progress real. You’ll be able to see, count and feel community capacity building, celebrate it, and, thus, gain more energy to keep your momentum going.
Where did this workbook come from?
This workbook was developed by more than a dozen people from across the nation. (Our names are listed in the back of this book.) Each of us earns our living by working with communities to help them build capacity. Since 1993, we have been meeting every six months as a Community Capacity-Building Learning Cluster.* We meet to learn from each other how to do our own work better, and to develop ideas for tools and other products that we think can help more communities help themselves build capacity.
So what is community capacity?
Community capacity is the combined influence of a community’s commitment, resources, and skills that can be deployed to build on community strengths and address community problems and opportunities.
■ COMMITMENT refers to the communitywide will to act, based on a shared awareness of problems, opportunities, and workable solutions. It also refers to heightened support in key sectors of the community to address opportunities, solve problems, and strengthen community responses.
■ RESOURCES refers to financial, natural, and human assets and the means to deploy them intelligently and fairly. It also includes having the information or guidelines that will ensure the best use of these resources.
■ SKILLS includes all the talents and expertise of individuals and organizations that can be marshaled to address problems, seize opportunities, and add strength to existing and emerging institutions.
Communities and the groups and institutions within them vary tremendously in capacity. Capacity is gained in degrees, sometimes slowly, other times rapidly. All communities and community groups, even those that seem the most broken down, have capacity in some measure and, we believe, are capable of developing more. They can increase their ability to build community, to grow with opportunities, and to confront threats to the community’s health and vitality.
How is community capacity built?
The three essential ingredients of community capacity—commitment, resources, and skills—don’t “just happen.” They are developed through effort and will, initiative and leadership.
Effort, will, initiative, and leadership are needed to:
■ Involve and educate community members, help shape opinion, and galvanize commitment to act.
■ Attract and collect resources, compile information, and shape ways for deploying these resources to “catalyze” change in how problems are addressed and opportunities are seized.
■ Organize people and work, develop skills, and coordinate or manage a sustained effort that builds up the positive qualities of community life that enable a community to address its problems and recognize and act on its opportunities.
All kinds of community groups contribute to community capacity to some degree. Communities, and the groups and institutions within them, can intentionally and strategically work to develop their capacity.
The Rural Development Triangle
Actually, we think that capacity building forms the base for more than just economic development. Solid community capacity also offers a foundation for making good decisions about the stewardship of a region’s natural, human, and cultural resources, so that its way of life can be maintained and improved over time.
The Rural Development Triangle pictured on the facing page shows these three important components of rural development, and how they relate to each other.
COMMUNITY CAPACITY BUILDING
As we will describe in even more detail in the next section, the purpose of community capacity building is to enable people in a community to work together, make well-considered and collaborative decisions, develop a vision and strategy for the future, and act over time to make these real—all while tapping and building the individual skills and abilities of an ever-increasing quantity and diversity of participants and organizations within the community.
Community capacity building efforts can encompass a wide range of activities, from formal leadership development efforts to community-wide strategic planning to a wide variety of less formal activities that build trust and camaraderie among citizens—like church socials, girl and boy scouts, volunteer community clean-ups, or regular chamber of commerce breakfasts.
Community capacity building forms the base of the Rural Development Triangle because the better a community’s capacity, the better the decisions a community makes about its economic development or stewardship choices—and the better the community is at turning those decisions into effective action.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Too often, people think that “rural development” means nothing but “economic development.” This misguided thinking drives the traditional view about how to build rural economies that has dominated the last half century: rely on the ready availability of natural resources, low labor costs, and lax taxes and regulations to recruit businesses to rural areas. This approach has helped some rural areas, if only temporarily, but has left others scarred economically, socially, and environmentally.
In recent years, as the economy has gone global, as the methods and technology of work have changed, and as natural resources have become more scarce and more highly prized as contributors to our quality of life, new choices for rural development have emerged. They center on growing entrepreneurs from within the community. They base business development strategy on the existing core competencies of resident people and firms—in other words, trying to take advantage of and strengthen what they are already good at. And they focus on finding and pursuing the market opportunities—that is, places to sell their existing products and skills, new ways to sell them, and ideas for developing new products and skills—that complement these core competencies.
STEWARDSHIP
A community must steward its natural resources and way of life—and nurture its culture and people—if development is to be maintained at a healthy and sustainable level over time.
Economic development typically produces growth. Growth, however, is not always good. Sometimes it can cure what ails you; when children grow taller and stronger, they feel they can do new and better things. Other times, growth can just make a bad situation worse, like when we become overweight. For many communities, as for most people, there is a “right size” beyond which growth will take over the way of life, deplete resources, and change the standard of living of many residents—some for the better, some for the worse.
In short, economic development and stewardship are somewhat in tension, and a community that focuses on either extreme—growth at any cost versus a knee-jerk resistance to any change—will not serve residents well.
Community stewardship is made possible when rural citizens acknowledge the value of their resources and engage in civic dialogue to determine, as a community, how and which resources should be developed or preserved. Typically, dialogue and action come when it is far too late, when unplanned development has destroyed the amenities that residents most appreciate, often the very natural and cultural resources that have the most value for the community’s long-term viability and vitality.
In general, we are coming to believe that rural leaders and communities must attend to each side of the Rural Development Triangle if they wish to achieve healthy, sustainable development, and that there is an advantage to addressing the three areas simultaneously. Nonetheless, paying attention to the base—that is, community capacity building—can only strengthen a community’s future economic development and stewardship efforts.
Seven Steps for Getting Started
So, how might a group of people in a community use this workbook to help them begin to measure—and build—capacity?
There are a lot of good methods for using materials like this with a group. Some groups can come up with their own schemes and exercises. Others benefit when they ask an outsider who is good at designing group activities to help them.
Rather than offer you a whole slew of exercises, we thought it best to start you off with some basic steps on how you might go forward to use this workbook material. You can change or adapt them to get them as simple or sophisticated as you wish.
Step 1: Form a Group
Get together with some like-minded citizens who are interested in the capacity of your community. This group may be made up of both paid staff and volunteers, but the important thing is that everyone is interested in how to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the community. A group of about a dozen is recommended to start: smaller groups may have problems if anyone drops out, and a larger group may make it difficult for everyone to be heard.
Step 2: Talk About the Workbook Materials
Whoever brings the group together might also take the responsibility for beginning the discussion of community capacity. Using the same organization as this workbook, the group can discuss:
■ What is community capacity building? A 10–15 minute review of workbook materials might be useful here.
■ Why should we care about it? This is a great place to talk about your community’s future.
■ How do we know capacity building when we see it? A brainstorming session on the community’s strengths and weaknesses or healthy vs. unhealthy descriptions from the workbook would work well here.
■ How can we measure our community’s growing capacity as we build it? Take a look at the Eight Outcomes.
Step 3: Pick Your Priorities
Agree on which of the eight Outcomes is most important to your community right now. One very simple technique for getting the group to select priorities is to list the eight Outcomes on a flip chart, make sure everyone understands each one, then give each person five self-stick dots to use in selecting her/his choices. Each person goes to the newsprint and selects priorities, and when the group is done, those Outcomes with the greatest number of dots become the first Outcomes to focus on.
Step 4: Organize Into Subgroups
Your group can be divided into subgroups to take a look at Indicators, Subindicators, and Measures. For example, if a group of 12 decides to focus on three Outcomes, then three subgroups might form to take a look at Indicators and Measures.
Step 5: Identify Information Sources
Each subgroup may want to talk together and research information sources for their Indicators and Measures. For example, if a subgroup needs information about community clubs and organizations, a community directory or telephone book might be a good source. If the subgroup can talk through the Indicators and Measures together, it makes individual research much easier.
Step 6: Create a Timeline Together
The entire group should discuss the time needed to collect information and agree on a timeline. If six months will be needed to get all the measurements done for several Outcomes, then the group might want to meet regularly for a while just to keep in touch and make sure everyone is accountable for assignments.
Step 7: Consider Publicity Opportunities
The process of selecting Outcomes and moving forward to measuring community capacities is an important undertaking and one that might be very interesting to local media. Take some time to talk together as a group about opportunities to make the process visible to the entire community, recruit help, and make the most of publicity.
The Eight Outcomes
Outcome 1
Outcome 2
Outcome 3
Outcome 4
Outcome 5
Outcome 6
Outcome 7
Outcome 8
Go forward —and give us feedback!
As we said earlier, the menu of measures we offer here can help make your progress real. We hope these measures will help you be able to see, count, and feel the capacity building in your community, to celebrate it, and to keep your momentum going.
But we need to make progress too! That’s why we have called this guide a “Workbook-in-Progress”—and it’s why we have designed it so that we can easily and constantly make improvements.
And we need your help to make that progress!
So please tell us about your experience with using this workbook and/or some other method you have used to measure community capacity building. Listed on the feedback form on the next page are some specific questions we’d like you to answer. We’re interested in what you have to say or have learned about all of them, but we’re happy to get your feedback on any—so address as many as you wish or have the time to answer.
Please share your feedback with us in one of three ways:
■ E-mail us with your answers and ideas
■ Fax us your filled-out feedback form
■ Send us your filled-out feedback form by regular mail
The addresses you need are all on the feedback form on the next page. We’re also willing to talk with you on the telephone or in person about your reactions and suggestions, but because our staff time is scarce, we’d prefer it if you give us written feedback first. Nonetheless, if telephone is the only way we’ll hear from you, please give us a call at 202-736-5848 and leave a message. (Warning: It might take us a few days to get back to you!)
Thanks!
