Chapter 5. Choosing Strategies to Promote Community Health and Development | Community Tool Box

• What does it mean to organize for community change?

• Why should you engage in community organization?

• What are effective strategies in community organization?

• How do you bring about change through community organization?

Throughout the Community Tool Box, our authors talk about different ways to improve our communities, and how to do all of the tasks, small and large, that make an organization work and work well. But broadly speaking -- how does all of this work? What are the overarching strategies that help improve our communities? Why do some grassroots organizations struggle, while others do great things and flourish?

Throughout the Tool Box, we offer many suggestions of what we feel are "right" ways to approach community work, such as Our Model of Practice: Building Capacity for Community and System Change. Our belief in the equality of all people, for instance, or in the importance of individuals' efforts to improve their communities -- are not topics of specific sections, but make up the foundation of what we do. These beliefs and ideas are at the base of all of our work at the Community Tool Box.

One such idea is that of community organization -- the idea that people can and should come together to talk about what matters to them, and then work together to successfully change their communities. As this idea is a common thread woven throughout our work, we'd like to use this chapter to make it explicit, and try to explore it more fully.

So, then, in the remainder of this section and in the next few sections, we'll do just that. We'll give a general overview of community organization -- what it is and how you do it. We'll also give brief explanations of different ways of looking at community organization. Although all of the strategies we will discuss have quite a bit in common, it may be helpful to separate out and compare different approaches in order for us to look more clearly at our work.

What does it mean to organize for community change?

Community organizing is the process by which people come together to identify common problems or goals, mobilize resources, and, in other ways, develop and implement strategies for reaching the objectives they want to accomplish.

As you can see, it's a big idea -- it's really a way of looking at all of the work that we do. Because of that, it encompasses many of the other ideas discussed in the Tool Box. For example, effective community organization will generally include:

• Gaining an understanding of the community. The first key step is learning what the community is like, and what is important to its residents.
• Generating and using power. There are many types of power; depending on the nature of your organization and your long-term goals, your organization may have (or need) different types. Different kinds of power include:
• Political or legislative power -- for example, you could work to pass laws to make it more difficult for young people to get hold of alcohol or tobacco
• Consumer power -- your organization might organize a boycott against a company whose policies are environmentally unsound
• Legal or regulatory power -- your organization might take a landlord who is not meeting legal responsibilities to court
• Disruptive power -- employees of an organization might go on strike as part of a demand for better working conditions
• Articulating issues. A crucial part of effective organizing is being very clear about what people find important, and what they feel should be done about it.
• Planning purposeful action. Action planning is central to effective community organization.
• Involving other people. Community organizing works in large part because of the strength that exists in numbers. The idea that "what we can't do alone, we can often accomplish together" is what community organization is all about.
• Generating and using other resources. While involving many people is at the heart of any community organizing effort, a group will need to obtain other resources as well. These may include cash, gifts in kind, and other forms of donations or support.
• Communicating with your community. There are many ways to effectively get the word out and let the community at large know what you are doing, why you are doing it, and why they may want to be a part of it.

An important point to remember is that community organization is fundamentally a grassroots process. It's not about an outside "expert" telling a community what it should work on. Instead, it's about community members identifying what matters to them and using their collective energy, knowledge, and resources to create change. In short, community organization is about helping people strengthen their ability to shape the conditions that affect their lives.

Community organizing, done well, can lead to a shift in power by building a broader base of people who can influence decisions that affect their lives. Many times, community organization is carried out with people whose voices and needs have historically been underrepresented -- people experiencing poverty, people experiencing homelessness, and other groups that have had limited influence in community decision-making.

Why should you engage in community organization?

Organizing members of a community -- no matter what your goals might be -- has some general advantages when the work is done well. These advantages include:

• A greater ability to bring about the changes you want to see. The collective voice of many people working together on a problem is usually much more powerful than a single voice.
• Greater agency and influence. Involving people, especially those who have historically had limited power in decision-making, in improving the conditions that shape their lives can strengthen their confidence, skills, and ability to influence those conditions.
• Increased community capacity. Organizing people to bring about change helps build skills, relationships, and local leadership that can make communities better able to address future issues.
• Increased social support. By bringing together diverse groups of people who are working for the same cause, people get the chance to talk and learn with others they may not have met otherwise. Both professionally and socially, community organization offers ample opportunity for growth and enjoyment among those who come together.
• Greater equity in society.  When people gain greater influence over the forces that shape their lives, it can broaden participation in community decision-making and help create more equitable conditions for groups whose perspectives and needs have historically received less attention.

What are effective strategies in community organization?

There are many different ways for a community to bring about the changes it wants. In the Community Tool Box, those we are most interested in are those in which people come together to improve life in their communities. This occurs in different ways, and for different reasons. Thus, there can be slightly different ways of looking at the process of organization. The four ways that follow will be discussed in more detail in the subsequent sections of this chapter.

Organization for locality development. Also known as community development, locality development focuses on community building by improving the process by which things get done. For example, it emphasizes the ideas of community competency -- the ability of the community to solve its own problems by learning skills such as group facilitation and critical thinking that are crucial to community work -- and working to build constructive relationships among people from different racial, ethnic, and social-class groups. A lot of weight is put on how people think and feel about things. The idea of building people's capacity to address their own priorities is key to this concept. Organizations such as the Peace Corps and VISTA offer examples of what we mean by locality development.

Social planning or policy change. Whereas locality development focuses primarily on the process of working together, social planning focuses on getting results. That is, it emphasizes addressing specific social problems, such as a lack of adequate housing or a very high crime rate. Delivering goods and services and avoiding the duplication of those services are important ends in this type of organizing.  It is often initiated by community officials or planners, or as the result of state or federal programs.

Because it relies heavily on statistics and other types of data, social planning may be viewed as more technical or data-driven than locality development. For example, an organizer might point out that, "Records from the health department show that only about 65% of the children entering kindergarten are fully immunized; we need an initiative to make sure all of our children receive the immunizations that will safeguard their health."

People with specialized knowledge or technical expertise may play an important role in this approach because of the emphasis placed on statistics and other data. At the same time, community knowledge and participation remain important for understanding what the data mean in local context and deciding how to respond.

Organizing for social action, or systems advocacy. When we think of the civil rights demonstrations in the South in the 1960s, or HIV activists conducting "die-ins" in front of the White House in the 1980s, this is what we are talking about. Social action organizing may involve direct pressure or confrontation when other approaches have not brought change, and the concept of social justice is a dominant ideal.

In social action organizing, members of a group -- often people who experience discrimination, economic disadvantage, or limited influence as individuals -- come together in order to advocate for increased resources, changes in policy, or equal treatment.

Coalitions are broad groups that bring together people and organizations from throughout the community, including many groups that may not normally work together. For example, a coalition working to increase HIV awareness in the community might bring together officials from the health department, representatives from the faith community, young people, business leaders, and members of the LGBTQ+ community -- groups that sometimes don't see eye-to-eye.

The power of coalitions comes from the idea of strength in numbers -- bringing together many diverse people can increase the influence, knowledge, and resources available to pursue shared goals.

When looking at these four strategies for community organization, it's very clear that these approaches are not completely distinct from one another. A group that is mostly concerned with the processes of locality development will nonetheless have some results it wants achieved, and it may use social action tactics when appropriate to help achieve those results. And certainly, a coalition might choose to use any (or more likely, all) of the other three strategies at some point during its life span.

However, our hope is that by separating these ideas -- even if the separation is somewhat academic -- we can help organizers think systematically about their desired ends and the means it will take to get there, as well as organize their work in accordance with their values.

How do you bring about change through community organization?

Community organization can be done in many ways; how you do it will depend on where you are working and what your specific goals are. More detailed "how-to's" are found in each of the strategy-specific sections that follow this one.

However, some of the basics are pretty much the same, whatever your ultimate goals might be. What follows, then, is simply a general overview to get you thinking about the fundamentals.

• First of all, and most obviously, you need to involve people in your community efforts. This is the heart of community organizing. This may be done in many ways -- from informal conversations, to going door-to-door, to using more formal methods of recruitment.

Door-knocking is a classic tactic in community organizing that is still used regularly by community activists. Going door-to-door in the area that interests you with a short script like the following can help start conversations and build interest.

Be thoughtful here. There may be some members of your group who are not comfortable going door-to-door as a way to get the word out. They may have safety concerns about particular areas or situations. Local rules may also place restrictions on door-to-door solicitation or canvassing. So, before you begin your campaign, check the comfort level of your members, plan for safety, and review applicable local requirements.

• Next, from the comments and suggestions you have heard from community members, identify the issue that seems to be of the greatest concern. Three questions are especially important to consider when deciding to tackle a problem:
  • Is it important enough to people that they’re willing to take action about it?
  • Is it specific? For example, violence may be a problem -- but what kind of violence are people concerned about? Domestic violence? Violence in our schools? Muggings after dark?
  • Can something be done to affect it in a reasonable amount of time? You may not be able to do much locally to address climate change as a whole, but you can probably do quite a bit to encourage energy conservation and the use of green building techniques and power sources.

Then, those who want to do something about the problem should reframe it as a goal. That gives people something positive to strive for, and enlists them in building the community, rather than simply eliminating something harmful or annoying.  It not only makes working on the current issue more compelling, but prepares people to continue the community-building process in the future.

• Developing your strategy is the next step in community organizing. What your strategy will be will vary greatly, depending on what type of organizing you are doing. However, in all types of organizing, members of your group will want to come together and develop agreed-upon answers to the following questions.
  • What are your long- and short-term goals?
  • What are your organizational strengths and weaknesses?
  • Who cares about this problem?
  • Who are your allies?
  • Who has the power or authority to make the change you are seeking?
  • How can we make our work enjoyable for community members to be a part of?

It's important to build your organization's strategy in a logical manner. People generally want actions to make sense in relation to the situation. Organizers should therefore develop the strategy so that each escalation of activity has a clear purpose and follows reasonably from what has already been tried, rather than appearing unnecessarily extreme or disconnected from the goal.

• From strategies, your organization should develop specific tactics for the strategy you have chosen. Examples of tactics include boycotts, petitions, demonstrations, meetings with people with power, and so on. As we discussed in the last step on developing strategies, members of the group must be sure that the tactics fit the situation -- that they are neither unnecessarily extreme nor too weak to be effective; that they target the appropriate people; and that they have a reasonable chance of advancing the group's goals.
• The next step in community organizing is to choose specific actions to carry out the strategies and tactics you have developed. These action steps are the bread and butter of your community work. They should be very explicit, specifying who will do what in what way by when.
• The organizer should look for opportunities for meaningful short-term progress, and these accomplishments should be recognized and celebrated. Most community work takes a long time; some of it is never completely finished. Your organization's goals may be very large -- ending child maltreatment; developing a thriving neighborhood in an area currently experiencing disinvestment and high levels of crime; or ending all forms of discrimination. These are goals that will take a long time to reach; they may not even be completed in our lifetime. 

Because of this, it's important for the group to recognize progress along the way. Achievable short-term goals can help people see that their work is contributing to something larger and maintain energy for a long-term effort. No one likes to feel that their work is useless, that they are giving up precious free time for a lost cause, or that they are not appreciated for all of their work. So make celebrations of your work -- and the people doing it -- a regular part of your organization's life.

• Finally, the organization needs to keep on going. As we said above, community work never ends. Your group may be organizing people to work on specific goals. But when your group has achieved a goal, or decided that it is time to end a particular campaign, then it's time to rest, regroup, reflect on what was learned, and decide what comes next.

In Summary

The power of an organized community working together to reach agreed-upon goals can be tremendous. Organization is an important part of efforts to improve life in our communities. And so, it is crucial for those of us working for our communities to understand how to do so effectively.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a tremendously powerful organizer. In a speech in Memphis in 1968, he rallied listeners with the words, "Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation." We at the Community Tool Box ask that you take that opportunity -- that you work to organize people for a better community, a better nation, and finally, a better world.

___You understand the fundamentals of community organizing.

___You can name the basic tasks that encompass community organizing.

___You have chosen an issue important to the entire community.

___You have selected a strategy such as locality development, social planning, systems advocacy, or coalition building.

___You will involve the community in all stages of the development and enactment process of your organization.

___You will select action steps and create short-end wins that allows your organization to celebrate success and continue to move the project forward.

Example #1: Organizing for Affordable Community Housing

The Community Tool Box spoke with Jennifer Van Campen of WATCH CDC in Waltham, Massachusetts. WATCH is a non-profit community development corporation founded in 1988. Their mission is to preserve and promote affordable housing, and to promote economic opportunities for low- and moderate-income residents of South Waltham. WATCH is committed to programs and practices that foster the empowerment of communities. Our thanks to Ms. Van Campen for her time and advice.

Ms. Van Campen: WATCH stands for Waltham Alliance to Create Housing. It's a Community Development Corporation that was founded in 1988 as a result of a wave of disinvestment that had taken root in Waltham. A lot of buildings were being foreclosed on by banks at a kind of bust of the real estate market -- so the initial work that WATCH did was around abandoned buildings or foreclosed bank owned properties.

CTB: How did it begin?

Ms. Van Campen: It was begun by a group of environmental and peace activists who wanted to do something at a local level. One of the founding members had gotten some information about community development corporations and said, "Hey, this is what we should do in our community." [Ed. Note: Community Development Corporations (CDCs) are discussed in Chapter 44, Section 5 of the Community Tool Box]. So the original group described themselves as hippies and just local folks who really wanted to take control of what was going on in the neighborhood.

So those initial years were really a lot of negotiations around the Community Reinvestment Act, and trying to get local banks to turn over properties and support the redevelopment of housing. They also focused on getting the city more involved in the protection and promotion of affordable housing, and underwent a very lengthy fight to promote some affordable housing in a couple of ordinances that were being modified or created at the time. For example, there was a big push to redevelop the waterfront. Waltham has a river -- the Charles River -- that runs right through downtown.

One developer wanted to come in and put in some parks and some housing. He really wanted to upscale the area, which the group WATCH at the time was in support of. However, we wanted to make sure there were some provisions for affordable housing in that mix -- so that was a long fight to get that. As a result, they were able to win the creation of an inclusionary zoning ordinance in the city. So now any development over ten units of housing must provide 10% of their units as affordable housing, or contribute 5% of the total development cost of the project into a housing development trust fund.

CTB: That must have been quite a fight!

Ms. Van Campen: It was, very long and very difficult I guess. Some of the early tactics largely included a public awareness campaign trying to emphasize to people that the future development of the city is going to go to outside speculative developers unless we get organized and we put into and on to the books what's important to us. So there were a lot of informational meetings, a lot of public actions at city hall at specific targeted buildings that were owned by banks, a lot of utilizing the local paper. That was probably it, just kind of steady ongoing pressure. There was really no one significant event or really even a significant element of the campaign that I would say won it for them--(just) knocking on the door long enough and hard enough -- it took about two years.

Afterward, that's when we started a series of acquisition and renovation and resale of one to four unit properties. And in about a three-year period we renovated nine buildings for a total of 17 units of affordable housing, most of which were resold. But a few of them we kept as rentals, so we still own and operate those.

CTB: OK, and so is that still the mission of what you're doing?

Ms. Van Campen: We're actually shifting in some ways back to our roots, which is more community organizing, public awareness kind of a more public policy focused effort. We need to go after the city and the state and private institutions, and compel them to do more to effect affordable housing. Our efforts to purchase and renovate buildings can really only do so much at a fairly small and slow scale, whereas the city could unilaterally create a law that says there will be a penalty for speculating in our community.

CTB: So do you have specific goals along the lines of public policy?

Ms. Van Campen: We're actually in the development of those. We're trying to get it up to ten points. Right now it's about a seven point platform which we're going to be asking the candidates for mayor, which would include things like requiring stricter code enforcement, eviction protection for people who file health code complaints, and a tax abatement for property owners who agree to rent to low- and moderate-income people utilizing both public and private funds to create a second mortgage program for people who want to buy homes in Waltham. The city is sitting on an affordable housing trust fund and they've not spent a dime of it in seven years. It's just sitting there, so we're going to urge them to work with us to create a plan to spend that money. So those are kind of the loose ideas right now.

Ms. Van Campen: I think in any business -- and in particular this is true for nonprofits -- you have to go with your market. Our markets' needs change, and one of the real weaknesses of many nonprofits is that they're unwilling to listen to their constituency and modify programs as needed. I think that people change, circumstances change and your programming has to change as a result.

CTB: Do you have any recommendations for others doing community organizing?

Ms. Van Campen: The single most important thing is to just really listen honestly and openly to people, and to be respectful of their needs and interests. What that means is that your work should reflect those needs and interests. It's too bad that you just got a big grant to do computer training if that's not what people in a community are talking about wanting and needing. And probably the only other big thing is that you can never give up on people. Never give up on a person -- maybe they can't come to the meeting on Thursday night, and maybe they never return your phone calls, but sometime they will. When they're ready -- you just can't close the door to anybody's opportunities.

For more information, call 781-891-6689, or stop by their offices at 333 Moody Street, second floor, Waltham. Please call ahead for wheelchair access. The staff members can assist you in English, French, Haitian, Creole and Spanish. 

Example #2: Organizing on Welfare

This article appeared on the Center for Community Change website and is reprinted here with permission. Our thanks go out to Ms. Icenhower and the Center for Community Change for allowing its use.

My journey into welfare organizing began two years ago when I stood up in a public hearing and asked the question, "How does this help families achieve self-sufficiency?" As a single mother of three children being directly affected by welfare reform, I felt I deserved an answer. I asked the question three times and received the same answer each time. "I can't answer that question" was the response from the Department of Public Health and Human Services official. I sat down feeling frustrated and all alone. A voice came from behind as a woman stood up and said, "You owe her an answer." I was owed an answer? Yes, I was. That feeling of having another voice stand with me has led me to where I am today -- a welfare organizer for Montana People's Action.

I read policy, I studied rules. I wanted to know all there was to know about welfare reform in Montana. I began to testify at committee hearings. I delivered a powerful speech at a rally protesting proposed cuts, and was interviewed for a newspaper article. I made my voice heard. I experienced backlash from other community members and the Office of Public Assistance for my activism. This was something I never expected and nobody warned me about. I was knocked down but rose again and continued on. I became a leader in the fight for our rights while continually asking my original question. I still haven't received the answer, although I have received many responses. I've learned that if you aren't getting the answer maybe it's time to change the question. The question now is, "How does this harm families?"

I believe being a recipient gives me a unique perspective in organizing other recipients. We have a commonality in understanding the struggles of day-to-day survival. I've learned through my experience what supports are necessary for recipients to be involved in the fight and to become leaders. We need child care to attend meetings and events, and sometimes transportation. We need someone to support us when backlash occurs and we need to know it can happen. We need to have others listen to what we have to say and validate it. These are our stories we share. It is not easy but it is worth it. Change does not happen on its own and we can make a difference. It is important that we share our voices and make them heard. We need to be at the table claiming and asserting our rights to have input in our own lives. We need to do this collectively, standing beside each other because our power is in standing together. We need to have vision for where we want to be in 2001-2002. More importantly, we need to put voice to that vision and have it heard.

Shelley Icenhower directs Welfare Advocates of Montana! (WAM!), which is a project of Montana People's Action, a statewide membership-based organization affiliated with the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations and ACORN.

Example #3: Organizing to End Discrimination

The Community Tool Box spoke with Della Mitchell, lead organizer for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. Our thanks to Ms. Mitchell for her time and advice.

Ms. Mitchell: The first campaign that I started [was] back in North Carolina. There was a theater in the city, in a city-owned building, and we asked the mayor if we [African-Americans] could go there. So, we started a picket line -- it was college and high school students. We walked that picket line for days and weeks trying to get a meeting with the manager so we could explain that this is wrong and we should have the right to go there. But we were not getting a lot of attention, until one weekend To Kill A Mockingbird was playing at the theater. And we thought, "You're going to show this movie, and we can't see it?! [That is,] unless we go into a little balcony area, where you have to sit cramped, unable to move at all."

With that same group, we decided we were going down this weekend, and it happened to be Easter weekend, and that made it just more excited to do this style of organizing. I notified the parents of what we were going to do: We were going to form this human chain in front of the theater -- if we didn't get in, nobody else was going to go in! And that we suspected we were going to be arrested. And sure enough, we were. I got calls from the mayor of the city, saying, "We're going to arrest you if you don't move yourselves from the front of theater." And we refused and we did indeed go to jail. We stayed in jail the whole weekend. They offered us bond and we wouldn't take bond. We're not going to post bond for doing what's our right to do. If you want to let us out, well of course we'll go.

And I've always been a very spiritual, religious person, so we chose to fast over that weekend. And we fasted, we prayed, we sang in jail, until they got word that we were going to get sick if we didn't eat. So they decided, "we're going to have to let them out of here." In the meantime, on that Sunday morning, there was a lot of rumbling going on. We could just hear that, and from a different part of the jail, we got a note from someone that could look out and see, telling us there were a lot of people out in front of the jail.

They did indeed let us out that Sunday morning, and as we walked out the door, almost every church in that city was outside having their Sunday morning service on the jail lawn in support of our getting arrested.

So it took this dramatic kind of thing to get more attention, from the powers that be as well as our communities. Because a lot of the churches were allowing us to have our meetings, there were about 10 or 15 youth, college students, who were participating in the picketing before this happened. And after this happened we were able to get -- anytime we sent out a flyer or sent out an announcement out to the churches -- we could get three, four, five hundred people just by word of mouth, without going out into the community.

I think that's a thing, that style of organizing -- civil disobedience -- that a lot of the young people now hate to hear us talk about. Because, "The sixties, the sixties, I'm tired of hearing about the sixties." Well, yeah, but it's time for us to go back, unless you have a better idea. It's time for us to go back to the sixties to really get the attention of the system and make them really realize that we're serious. We're not doing that type of organizing now. There's a lot of talk, and there's a lot of organizing, but it's not a movement like we had in the sixties. If there was, we wouldn't be dealing with this welfare reform that we're having to deal with now and all of the other homelessness. We wouldn't have the kind of homelessness we have now, if we were organized, I mean really organized, saying to this system, enough is enough.

CTB: For people who are becoming organizers, what advice would you give them?

Ms. Mitchell: If they are getting into organizing they have to move themselves out of the way, and really be open to what the people are saying, and then choose the issues. The issue needs to be the one the community chose. [For example,] I have a real strong feeling for day care. But if you're talking to me about day care, and I don't have a place to live or I don't have a job that pays a living wage, I'm not going to listen to you. So you have to make sure you choose an issue that is widely felt by the community.

You need to start with one that's winnable, you need to know who your target is, and make sure you're not choosing an issue that's going to divide your community. Try to get them to come together. It just needs to be deeply felt.

You have to make sure that you have respect for the people that you're organizing. Just become one of those people, whether you're an organizer that's coming out of that community or you've been hired by an organization and sent into a community, you have to become a part of the fabric of that community and respect that community.

You have to have really strong commitments and also realize that when you go into organizing you're not in a 9 to 5. You have to be ready to go into all types of neighborhoods, because poor people, unfortunately, live in the very depressed high-crime neighborhoods, and you have to be willing to go into that.

And coming from a spiritual point of view, take the higher power in on your side. Not everyone thinks that way, and that doesn't mean you can't be a good organizer if you don't think that way, it just helps me. Speaking from a personal point of view, it's hard to separate me and that part of my life, so I think of Him.

It's almost impossible to organize without bringing in the people who are affected by the issue that we are organizing around. You have to have homeless people involved, you have to have poor people involved who are affected by welfare reform, lack of affordable housing, jobs that pay a living wage. They have to be involved, and they have to be out there saying this is what we need, in order to bring about the change to make our lives better. So that's my hope. And that we'll get others into the same mold, that we must organize the poor, get them registered to vote, let them speak for themselves! 

A PowerPoint presentation summarizing the major points in the section.

Suppose the quality of life in your community is declining. The major employer has packed up and moved to a place where labor and utilities are cheaper. Without steady paychecks, many people in town don't have the money to keep up their houses and yards, or to support charitable organizations. Many people have found other jobs, but have to commute long distances to get to them. In some of the most difficult situations, individuals and families are experiencing homelessness and are living in shelters or in their cars. Violence and substance use may also be increasing as economic stress, reduced community resources, limited opportunities for young people, and other difficult circumstances affect the community. Community morale has declined, and many community members feel powerless to do anything about it. How can you change this situation so that people start to take action to improve their lives?

One answer is to help people recognize that they can make a difference and get them to work together in thinking out what they can do, and then doing it. But what if there are serious divisions in the community, or what if many people don't see themselves as able to change anything? Perhaps some groups are shut out of the political process or discriminated against economically or socially. Perhaps the many diverse groups in the community have little contact with or knowledge of one another. Before you can get people working together, you have to help create opportunities for them to make contact with and begin to trust one another.

This is a situation where locality development may be especially important. If community members can learn to communicate across class, ethnic, and racial lines, and to set up organizations, systems, and policies to take advantage of their resources and address their problems, they can make life better for everyone. In this section (and the two that follow) we'll discuss three different but overlapping approaches to community organization and community change. In this section, we'll discuss how to lay the groundwork and create a foundation for such a community-wide cooperative effort.

What is locality development?

As we stated in the first section of this chapter, community or locality development is community building through improving the process by which things get done. This can be an end in itself, but it can also be seen as the beginning of a larger process.

While locality development can be defined as improving process, it, like all community organizing, must be focused on action and results. You can't get people involved in a process, or in creating a process, unless there's some goal at the end, whether that's persuading the city to install a new traffic light or reducing poverty. That's why, when we discuss how to engage in and use locality development, we include choosing issues that speak to felt community needs. Only by focusing on taking action to achieve outcomes that address those issues are you likely to get community members involved.

The four types of community organizing:

1. Locality development creates an infrastructure for community activism and action.
2. Social planning and policy change uses the political and other systems to create policies that work toward improving the quality of life for all community members.
3. Social action and systems advocacy engage community members in understanding and building power, and using it to advocate and negotiate for the interests of the community.
4. Coalition building constructs community-wide groups of organizations and individuals, either to work on specific issues or to address more general community needs.

These four aspects of community organization are usually viewed as separate, but it might be more useful to consider them as overlapping parts of a whole. If you do a good job at locality development, you'll have a secure base of people with the capacity to act in any of several ways. Effective community organization works to create a community that's prepared to respond to challenges and opportunities. Locality development is the building of an inclusive, community-based infrastructure that can then respond in whatever way is necessary to meet challenges, take advantage of resources, and create positive social change.

Earlier conceptions of the separation of the field into three models - locality development, social planning, and social action - have given way to a more comprehensive view that defines the three as interrelated and overlapping.

The Community Tool Box accepts and extends this latter view. It defines the three models as a continuum -- one where the distinctions among models are not always clear -- best served by an inclusive, participatory stance that involves many sectors of the locality or community. Any of the three can be a base for community capacity, participation, and learning, but each is oriented toward a different kind of situation and result.

• Locality development serves as a base for other organizing, and, in itself, is often aimed at community-wide issues that affect everyone: economic development, public health, etc. Its goal is the building of community capacity to deal with whatever needs or issues arise. It also shows itself in smaller community projects -- neighborhood clean-ups, the building of a community playground, etc. -- that help to define and build a sense of community among diverse residents of a locality.
• Social planning and policy change is oriented toward policy solutions -- changing or passing laws or regulations to address problems or conditions -- particularly those initiated by officials or other leaders from inside or outside the community. These policies should be determined through a participatory process that involves those they benefit or otherwise affect. This model often involves people with technical or professional expertise from outside the community working with community members on strategy and planning.
• Social action is based on the assumption that there is strength in numbers. By banding together and taking action, community members can increase their political or economic influence and ability to create change. Social action is often necessary -- and often used -- where serious inequity exists and those with decision-making power have been unwilling or unable to correct it. Groups affected by these conditions can use collective action to build and exercise power and advocate for a more equitable distribution of attention, opportunity, and resources.

Common to our interpretation of all of these models is the assumption that the community has, or can develop, substantial capacity to address its own problems and to help determine the direction that health and community development should take. That means that it has -- or can strengthen, with resources, support, and experience -- the people, the institutions, the knowledge, the intelligence, and the political and economic know-how to tackle the issues it faces.

The terms "community development" and "locality development" are sometimes used interchangeably, but a community and a locality are not the same, and working with each may require its own approach. (For convenience, in this section we'll use the term locality development to refer to working in a particular way with both localities and self-defined communities.)

A locality is a place -- a town, a city neighborhood, a housing project, a rural area -- and locality development looks on that place as a community.

The word "community" is commonly used to refer to a locality where people live, as well as to all the people who live there. A community can also refer to a group of people that identifies itself as a community because of shared experiences, backgrounds, values, religion, or culture. The mayor of a city may call the town a community, but most cities have a number of self-defined communities within them -- an Italian-American community, an LGBTQ+ community, a Jewish community, a Black community, a business community, etc. While not all members of these communities share the same points of view or act in the same ways, they may see themselves as having something important in common with fellow community members.

The difference here comes in attempting to organize a locality that isn't already a self-defined community, but instead includes people who may simply happen to live in the same place. Members of a self-defined community may begin with some trust in one another and with the assumption of at least one major shared idea, experience, or value. Residents of a locality may feel that they have very little in common with one another, or even that their interests conflict. Thus, development in a self-defined community may be able to start relatively easily once community members have accepted the fact that it's a good idea. In a locality, little may be able to happen until residents make connections, identify common interests, and start to see themselves as part of a community. . . and that may take a long time.

A locality can be a community in the same way. Many small towns, especially those largely populated by families that have lived there for generations, have strong community identities.

The small New England town that the writer lives in has its conflicts and divisions, but when a dairy farmer's barn burned down, townspeople of all stripes donated money, materials, and labor to rebuild it. The same had been true in prior years for a lumber mill and a timber framer's workshop, even though the timber framer was a "new person," someone who had only moved to the town in recent decades. The fact that he lived in and participated in the life of the town made him a member of the community, even though native-born residents hadn't known his grandparents.

So what does locality development actually consist of? What kind of infrastructure does it refer to? In brief -- we'll go into more detail later when we discuss how to engage in locality development -- it's a matter of creating inclusive and participatory systems and processes that bring people throughout the community together to work on common problems or toward common goals. It also entails encouraging leadership from within the community, developing communication networks that span sectors, and establishing the process as an accepted part of community life.

Locality development -- often, but not always, in contrast to social action -- emphasizes cooperative action across a community rather than beginning with the assumption that conflict is necessary. The purpose might be to gain economic stability, to improve social and/or political conditions, to protect the community against a threat -- the demolition of a neighborhood to make way for a highway or for expensive housing -- or to preserve its historic, cultural, or environmental character.

Whatever form it takes, the process is meant to build the community and make it stronger, to help its members see the value of working together toward common purposes, and to create ways to make that happen.

Social action, more fully explained in Section 4 of this chapter, is generally aimed at organizing with community members who are experiencing systemic barriers, exclusion, discrimination, or unfair treatment. Its purpose is often to build power and use that power to address inequities and change unfair or damaging policies and practices. Depending on the circumstances, it may involve an adversarial process based on building and exercising political or economic power.

Locality development is a cooperative process that includes many sectors of the community and is based on finding common ground and defining and pursuing a common vision. (It can, in fact, overlap with social action when a whole community is disadvantaged or discriminated against and must gain the power to negotiate with the state or with other communities.)

Both of these are necessary aspects of community organizing, depending on the circumstances in a particular community. The deeper the divides and the greater the inequity, the more likely that social action -- what is often seen as classic community organizing -- may be an appropriate course to take. As relationships, influence, and opportunities for meaningful participation change, social action may develop into more collaborative forms of locality development. Likewise, if collaborative methods repeatedly fail to address serious inequities, locality development may lead to social action.

Why engage in locality development?

• Locality development can break down barriers within the community by encouraging and improving communication among diverse individuals and groups in the population. When community members from many sectors of the community work together to assess assets and needs, they get to know one another as individuals, rather than only as broad categories (e.g., "youth," "people experiencing poverty," "business people"). This interaction not only makes it possible for people from different backgrounds and circumstances to work together, but also fosters mutual respect and empathy.
• Locality development can bring together people who normally have little contact, and define the community as including all of them. Just as it breaks down barriers, locality development can strengthen connections among community members and help people recognize that the community functions best when all its members have opportunities to thrive.
• Locality development can lay a solid foundation for community support of activism around issues of importance. When a community has a process through which people can participate meaningfully in discussions about how to deal with issues, the resulting action plans are more likely to reflect community priorities. When community members feel ownership of the plans, they may be more willing to help carry them out.
• Locality development can help individuals and groups acquire new skills and knowledge.
  • Leadership and administrative skills.
  • A better understanding of, and ability to communicate with, people from a variety of backgrounds.
  • Interpersonal skills.
  • Facilitation skills.
  • Analytical skills.
  • An overview of how systems interact to influence the life of the community.
  • An understanding of how economics, on both the large and small scales, affects people's lives.
• Locality development can help identify and strengthen emerging leaders from within the community. This happens both naturally, as people take on greater responsibility through the locality development process, and through encouragement and support from current leaders.
• Locality development can encourage the community to identify its own resources and understand its own strengths. Once people have a clear sense of what they have available and what they themselves can do, they can use their resources to their best advantage.
• Locality development can strengthen the community's capacity to identify and address its own problems. The advantages of being in this position include:
  • Increased community confidence and a stronger sense of collective ability, motivating community members to tackle difficult problems.
  • Greater ability to work with outside resources and expertise on the community's own terms, rather than having outsiders determine what is best for the community.
  • An increase in the speed with which the community can respond to problems and mobilize resources.
  • A greater likelihood that the problems being addressed reflect the concerns and priorities of community members.
• Locality development can create meaningful opportunities for people throughout the community to participate and can make participatory democracy a normal method of community decision-making. Building an inclusive, participatory infrastructure helps ensure that a wide range of opinions and needs can be heard and considered, and can lead to community systems that involve all sectors.
• Locality development can build a foundation for real community and equity, leading to a healthy community and long-term, positive social change. When people work together as a community, it becomes harder to overlook particular groups or ignore their needs, and easier to envision and work toward a community in which the necessary underpinnings of health are available to everyone.

When and where should you engage in locality development?

In most sections of the Community Tool Box, the answer to the "when?" question begins with a sentence similar to "While this activity is almost always appropriate, there are certain times when it's especially useful." Locality development can be useful in many communities, particularly where there are inequities in the social system, where the quality of life for some community members is unacceptable, where systems or resources are inadequate to meet community needs, or where the community is threatened from within or without. It's also appropriate when things are going well, since this may be a good time to make positive changes that would be harder in difficult times (improvements in environmental conditions, for instance, or a push for pedestrian-friendly areas).

In some communities, the need may be immediately obvious: major employers have left, housing stock is deteriorating, Main Street storefronts are empty and decaying, violence is on the rise or already at frightening levels, etc. There may be racial or ethnic tensions, large numbers of people experiencing homelessness, or major problems relating to the public schools, the environment, or corruption in local government. Whatever the situation, it may be apparent that the community needs to take action before conditions become worse.

In many cases, however, problems are hidden or unacknowledged. Widespread alcohol use disorders or domestic violence may be treated as simply part of community life, for instance. Community members may overlook or be unaware of hunger and poverty that exist in isolated pockets, or simply not realize that many of their neighbors have limited access to health care. Until there's a crisis, communities may have difficulty recognizing the full extent of problems they face. It may take a disaster -- as in the case of the flooding and devastation of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 -- to bring longstanding inequities and vulnerabilities into broader public view.

An ongoing locality development process can not only contribute to a healthier community, but can also help a community weather difficult times, prepare for emergencies, and take advantage of good times to make things even better. For that reason, locality development can be valuable in many communities and under many different conditions.

Who should be involved in locality development?

To be most effective, a locality development process should be inclusive and participatory. That means it should include people from all sectors of the community and provide meaningful opportunities for them to participate. Their role should not be limited to acting as advisors or consultants, but should include full participation in the phases of identifying community issues, making decisions, taking action, and working toward a better quality of life.

It's important not to think about self-identified communities as all of a piece. The "Black community" in any U.S. city is not made up of people who all think alike, or who are all of the same income or education level. It may have leaders, but they don't necessarily speak for all members of that community, any more than any other individual does. It may have institutions or organizations that occupy important places in the community, but they don't represent everyone. Diversity refers to more than skin color or background: it encompasses opinions, political stances, income, attitudes, and a multitude of other factors, and as many of those perspectives as possible should be included when you're recruiting people to take part in locality development.

Some of the factors that a locality development effort might consider in putting together a grassroots group are:

• Interest in the effort
• Race
• Ethnicity
• Gender
• Sexual orientation
• Geography. This may mean including people from a variety of neighborhoods, from several rural areas, or even from different city blocks. Geography is especially important when people from different areas have different interests because of differences in outlook, income, culture, etc.
• Income. This is an economic measure.
• Class identification. Class identification may or may not be tied directly to income. Some industrial workers may have higher incomes than some middle managers, but still identify themselves as working class rather than middle class. Those middle managers, as well as teachers and other professionals and "white collar" workers with similar incomes, on the other hand, may be more likely to think of themselves as middle class. People with similar incomes may also understand their class position very differently depending on education, occupation, family background, and life experience. Class identification can therefore involve more than income alone.
• Age
• Religion
• Culture. This may be linked to ethnic or racial background (the factors that usually come to mind when culture is mentioned), age, religion, etc. Adolescents may have their own language, norms, and styles, for instance, as do many immigrant groups and faith communities. These different cultural experiences and perspectives need to be considered when engaging in locality development.
• Language
• Organizations and institutions. Service clubs, fraternal organizations, community-based organizations, hospitals, universities, libraries, and other bodies need to be involved. They can bring valuable resources and constituencies with them.
• Local government and government agencies. Not only elected and appointed officials, but police and firefighters, public assistance workers, and others in similar positions should be drawn in. As policies and systems change, they'll often have important roles in carrying them out and should share in ownership of the development process from the beginning.

How do you engage in locality development?

The "Iron Rule" of community organizing is to never do for people what they can do for themselves. In practice, this means supporting people in developing and exercising their own leadership, knowledge, and decision-making power rather than taking over work that community members are able and willing to lead. Thus, the process is participatory by definition.

The participatory nature of organizing is crucial, regardless of the type of organizing it is. The inclusive process we've been describing may ultimately depend on direct action and the exercise of political power for success, but it may also depend on collaboration. Locality development can also be an exercise in bringing together all the sectors of a community -- including those that hold substantial institutional or political power -- in an effort to improve conditions and the quality of life for everyone.

Who is included in the definition of "community" depends on the situation that exists to begin with. If the purpose of organizing is to gain equal footing or fair treatment for a group that has had neither, then that group is the community in question. If the aim is to revive a town whose economy has all but died, or to improve health conditions across the board, then all community members are the constituency.

The ideal situation is one in which people throughout the locality can work together and in which everyone's interests and needs are considered. In reality, full agreement may be rare, but meaningful participation and respectful engagement are worth striving for. Building a community and developing an infrastructure that makes it possible for people to work together are important regardless of the aim of organizing.

There are a number of basic steps to locality development that we'll discuss, more or less in the order in which they should be taken. "More or less" because each community and situation is unique. In some cases, you may need to work on several things at once, or to take a particular step out of order, or even skip it entirely. It's important to respond to the circumstances that exist.

Get to know the community. The term "get to know" really means three things here:

• Learn about the history, relationships, issues, factions, and other aspects of the community or locality you're working with before you start.
• Get acquainted with the people in the community. Develop relationships, so that they know who you are, what you're doing there, and why they might choose to talk to and trust you.
• Understand how people in the community view themselves and others.

We'll briefly examine what each of these means in practice.

Community history
Knowing community history is extremely important. If you don't understand the alliances, rivalries, conflicts, and successes of the community, particularly those of the recent past, you're more likely to make mistakes that damage relationships or undermine the effort. The time spent understanding the context beforehand can save much more time later.

To learn community history, you have to talk to those who've experienced it or heard about it directly from people involved. Conversations with older community members or long-time residents can yield a great deal of information, although individual memories and interpretations will differ. If you make contact with a broad range of people, you can compare perspectives and identify where accounts agree or disagree. Research in newspaper archives or on the Web could also be helpful here.

Getting acquainted and building trust
In many communities -- whether defined by geography or by class, ethnicity, or some other criterion -- it can take time for an outsider to build relationships. Especially if you're unfamiliar to community members or come from a noticeably different background, people may understandably be cautious about spending time with you or listening to what you have to say. Even if you're already a member of the community, or come from a background or culture similar to that of the community with which you're working, you won't automatically gain trust. You'll have to build it by demonstrating honesty, consistency, respect, and commitment over time.

You have to spend time in the community and meet people where they are -- in the streets, at community events, in stores and restaurants, in people's homes when invited, and in other places where community life takes place. There's a reason that the Peace Corps and similar organizations emphasize becoming part of the communities in which volunteers work. Familiarity helps build relationships. If community members actually know you and have had conversations with you about your family, your interests, your values, and your reasons for being involved, they're more likely to understand who you are when you ask them to join in a development effort.

Understanding how community members view themselves and others
Understanding how community members view themselves and others both inside and outside the community will help you understand where you and the community need to start. Some of the factors you might explore:

• How much do community members interact with one another? How well do they know one another? Is there a sense of community solidarity, or are there deep divisions between long-time residents and newcomers, or between people of different races or ethnicities? Are there existing mechanisms in the community that serve to bring people together or keep them apart?
• Do community members see themselves as a community? Do they see themselves as part of multiple communities? Do people identify with the community as you've defined it, or with any community? Or are their strongest connections instead to family, friendships, work, faith communities, or other networks?
• How do community members view change and their own ability to affect change? Do they want changes? Do they feel that change is possible? Are they angry? Afraid? Discouraged? Hopeful?
• How do community members describe the community's strengths and challenges? Do they feel that the community is respected by people and institutions outside it, or overlooked or treated unfairly?

How community members view change and their sense of the strength of their community are extremely important factors to understand. If people have repeatedly seen their efforts ignored or believe that they have little influence over important decisions, they may understandably be reluctant to invest time and energy in another effort. Helping create realistic opportunities for meaningful participation and demonstrating that collective action can make a difference are often among the first -- and hardest -- tasks that community organizers and community builders face.

It can be harder still when some community members are confident that change is possible and others see it as a lost cause ("'They' are too powerful," "we have no knowledge of how things work," "everything gets decided behind the scenes anyway," etc.). Making sure that the more confident or experienced group does not dominate the process, while still keeping them engaged, is a difficult but necessary balancing act.
 

• What kinds of current or potential connections do community members have to policymakers or other influential people or groups? Do they see those connections as possible or useful?

Identify the reasons that the community is likely to be willing to organize.

The reason that Saul Alinsky, commonly seen as the father of modern community organizing, was able, in 1930s Chicago, to bring together neighborhood groups that had been hostile to one another is that they shared important interests in improving conditions in and around the stockyards and challenging conditions they saw as unfair. If a community is to come together, it has to have good reasons for doing so, and those reasons have to be determined by the community itself, not by an authority, expert, or outside organizer, no matter how well-intentioned.

Those reasons may be small specific issues (the deterioration of a neighborhood park, the need for more streetlights) or larger concerns (the fear that the community is dying economically or socially; feelings of frustration or lack of influence; a sense that opportunities are being missed; widespread discrimination and inequity; hostility from outside the community; etc.). Furthermore, the reasons may not be understood or shared by everyone. It's crucial to find out what community members are concerned about, and to determine what might move them to unite and take action to address their concerns.

Determine who are the opinion leaders and trusted individuals and groups in the community.

Opinion leaders are people whose perspectives and advice are respected by others in the community. They may be leaders because of their position (CEOs, clergy, college presidents, government officials), because of professional knowledge or experience (doctors, professors), or simply because they have demonstrated level-headedness, fairness, compassion, or good judgment over time. Often, they are community members who have earned their neighbors' respect through their actions and relationships.

Find those people and start with them. They'll often know how to attract others, and who among those others can bring still more people with them. Their support can lend credibility to a locality development effort. In addition, they're likely to be able to identify and help navigate personality and group conflicts and other potential difficulties in locality development.

Alinsky's organizing efforts in the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago were successful at least partially because he was able to gain the support of two institutions that were particularly important to many residents at the time -- the unions and the Catholic church.

Perhaps the most important thing you can do is to treat everyone with respect. If you can develop a reputation as someone who's straightforward and honest, and who respects everyone, people will be more willing to hear what you have to say. If you're condescending, or present yourself as knowing more about the community's needs than community members themselves, you can quickly undermine trust.

Recruit community members to the effort.

First and foremost, locality development relies on personal contact. Meetings in people's living rooms, door-to-door canvassing, outreach to organizations, institutions, and agencies, community events, phone calls, texts, e-mail, and other forms of direct communication can all contribute to an organizing effort. It's difficult to build relationships and participation without direct communication.

Recruitment can and should go on continuously. It doesn't matter where you are in the locality development process -- there are almost always additional people and perspectives that can strengthen the effort.

Recruitment is really inseparable from building trust and becoming part of the community. Some organizers believe that living in the community can help establish credibility and deepen their understanding of local life, and in some communities that may be especially important. Having the support of opinion leaders and other trusted community members and groups can also help, but it is not a substitute for doing the core work of organizing: making personal contact with people, listening to them, and maintaining relationships over time.

Build a communication system.

The first of the system improvements necessary to locality development is a communication network that makes it possible for people and organizations involved in the effort to reach one another. Not only can such a system make working together a great deal easier, but it can also help correct rumors, clarify misunderstandings, and address problems before they grow.

The ability to make direct contact with someone and find out exactly what they meant in a public statement, or whether they're actually planning what you've heard they are, can make all the difference. A remark may have been misunderstood or misquoted; a plan may still be under discussion rather than final. On the other hand, if there's actually a problem, it's usually better to deal with it straightforwardly and early than to wait until positions have hardened.

One important historical example of the value of direct communication is the Washington-Moscow hotline established in 1963 after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Contrary to the popular image of a "red telephone," the original system used written communications rather than a direct voice call. It provided U.S. and Soviet leaders with a rapid channel for communicating during crises and was first used substantively during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The larger lesson for community organizing is straightforward: direct, reliable communication can prevent misunderstandings from becoming conflicts.

A communication system, in this sense, doesn't necessarily refer to complicated hardware or technology, but rather to people knowing whom to contact for what and having practical ways to reach one another. This might include a shared contact list, phone and text trees, e-mail lists, messaging groups, newsletters, or other systems. The important thing is to choose communication methods that are accessible to the people involved rather than assuming that everyone uses the same technology.

Encourage leadership from the community from the beginning.

Identify, support, and mentor emerging leaders, so that they can take on increasing responsibility and ultimately help direct the effort. One of the key pieces of infrastructure that locality development is meant to create is strong community leadership, making it possible for the effort to be sustained by community members themselves.

Some community members may have had fewer opportunities to participate in formal meetings, speak in public, facilitate groups, or navigate organizational decision-making. Providing training, mentoring, and accessible opportunities to practice these skills can help more people participate confidently and take on leadership roles.

Create a structure to help the community accomplish its goals.

In order to solidify and coordinate the development effort, it is often useful to create an organization of some sort, or even more than one, to provide structure for and coordinate your action. An exception may be a situation in which an organization already exists that has community credibility and can appropriately take on the work of locality development.

There are a number of reasons for establishing an organization or other structure:

• It makes the work easier. An organization gives the effort an identity that can then be used to seek out resources, devise and carry out actions, gain official status, and state positions. It can make it easier to operate in the world of government regulations and fundraising, explain the effort to others, and attract participants.
• It makes the work more efficient and more effective. A structure makes it easier to divide and delegate tasks efficiently, to contact people when things need to be done, and to keep track of everything.
• It gives the effort standing in the community. A formal or recognizable structure can demonstrate that the development effort is organized, serious, and supported by community members.
• It lends form to the development effort. An organization is something community members can point to as a result of their coming together. It has a name, structure, and purpose, and people are associated with it.
• It creates a focus for community work. An organization can act as a coordinating body for whatever comes next. It provides an organizational focus and, in some cases, a physical one as well -- an office, meeting place, phone, or computer. People belong to it, work with it, or participate in its activities. They care about what it stands for because they helped shape it.
• It unites those involved in locality development. An organization gives community members something formal to belong to and participate in. It brings people together for meetings and other activities and gives them an ongoing structure through which to work with one another.
• It gives the community an entity that it helped create and shape. If the development effort has been conducted well, the organization will grow out of the participation and ideas of community members. That sense of ownership can strengthen people's commitment to making it successful.

To this point, the steps for engaging in locality development apply equally well to social action or policy change. The next few steps are specifically aimed at an effort that seeks to unite the whole community in a drive to improve conditions broadly, rather than an effort focused primarily on gaining equity or power for a group that's been treated unfairly, or a drive focused primarily on changing policies and laws.

Define the most important issues that relate to the community's overall concerns.

Just as when your group came together, the issues to be worked on must come from the community itself and reflect community members' concerns and needs. Some of these issues may be the same reasons you cited for coming together; others may be stepping stones to a larger goal. In either case, people are more likely to find them compelling when they have had a meaningful role in identifying and defining them.

Develop a strategic plan.

Once you've determined where you're going -- i.e., the issues or problems to be addressed -- the next step is to figure out how to get there. The way to do that is by developing a strategic plan -- a step-by-step blueprint for accomplishing your goals. This means embarking on a participatory process to establish a vision for the community, a mission for your effort, objectives to be reached, a strategy by which to reach them, and actions that will carry out the strategy (VMOSA).

An important part of planning is considering what's possible and what will help to keep the development process going. It's often wise not to try to reach your ultimate goals all at once, but to work in stages. Aim first for something that's achievable, so that the effort can build experience and momentum. When that goal is met, strategize again and set the next goal. With each stage of the effort, people may gain confidence, knowledge, and commitment that can help them work toward the more ambitious goals set out in the strategic plan.

Implement your plan.

Here's where all your organizing and hard work pay off. The community takes action to achieve the results it wants, based on the plan that's been developed.

Continually monitor and evaluate your work.

The Community Tool Box considers these functions so important to any effort that it devotes four chapters (36-39) to evaluating community organizations and initiatives. Monitoring and regularly evaluating your work gives you the opportunity to change what's not working and to respond to changes in the community. It also tells you what you're doing well, and may give you ideas about how to build on your successes.

You should be looking at both the process and the results of what you're doing. How successfully have you brought in people from across the community? How meaningfully are they participating in making or causing changes that will improve people's lives? How well is your organization running, and does it meet the community's needs? Is the action you're involved in effective at keeping you moving toward your goals? Are you achieving the outcomes you're aiming for?

Make the locality development effort sustainable and community-led, so that it can continue as long as it's needed.

The Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC), which Saul Alinsky helped establish in 1939, still operates today and continues to provide community-based services and economic development programs in Chicago's Southwest Side. You may not be interested in that level of longevity, but locality development is an ongoing process. Individuals and groups move, circumstances change, and new community members who know little about the original effort take their places. If you build strong relationships and a strong organization that belongs to and is led by community members, the effort can adapt and continue as long as it's useful.

In Summary

Locality development is the facet of community organizing that concentrates on building an infrastructure of relationships, processes, and systems that makes it possible for the community to identify and address its own problems and respond to its own needs through planning, action, and advocacy. The development process should be inclusive of all sectors and participatory, and leadership should be encouraged and strengthened from within.

Locality development can provide a foundation for many organizing efforts. It is the process by which community members are recruited to the effort and invited to identify and address community needs and problems by using community resources and the influence that comes from people acting together. That may mean that people throughout a large community unite to address such major community issues as economic development or public health, or it may mean that members of a more closely defined community -- Hispanics, workers in a particular trade or plant, Muslims, people receiving public assistance, tenants of a housing project -- unite to address more specific concerns or advocate for fair treatment.

Whatever the situation, locality development starts with understanding the community and its history, and building relationships one by one. Relationships with trusted individuals can help greatly in attracting others to the effort and in identifying potential pitfalls and paths to success. As recruitment proceeds, emerging leaders from within the community can be identified and supported with training and mentoring. At some point, the effort will probably form an organization or other formal structure to act as a focus. The organization -- community-led, inclusive, and participatory, as the effort should be from the beginning -- engages in identifying issues, strategic planning and action, and evaluation. The organization also finds resources to sustain the effort, and becomes the vehicle that carries the work forward for the long term.

Locality development is useful in many communities. It can address inequities, systemic problems or inadequacies, policy development or change, or serious community problems. Conducted well, it can contribute to long-term, positive social change and a healthier community.

What is locality development?

___Locality development is community-building through improving the process by which things get done.

___Locality development creates an infrastructure for community activism and action.

___Locality development emphasizes positive action on the part of a whole community.

Why should you engage in locality development?

___Locality development breaks down barriers within the community by encouraging and improving communication among all individuals and groups in the population.

___Locality development brings together people who normally have no contact, and defines the community as including all of them.

___Locality development lays a solid base for community support of activism around issues of importance.

___Locality development helps individuals and groups acquire new skills and knowledge.

___Locality development brings forth the natural leaders from within the community.

___Locality development encourages the community to identify its own resources and understand its own strengths.

___Locality development makes the community self-sufficient and able to identify and solve its own problems.

___Locality development gives voice to everyone, and makes participatory democracy the normal method of community decision-making.

___Locality development builds a foundation for real community and equity, leading to a healthy community and long-term, positive social change.

When should you engage in locality development?

___Locality development is appropriate at almost any time in almost any community.

Who should be involved in locality development?

___Locality development should be inclusive and participatory, involving people from all sectors and areas of the community.

How do you engage in locality development?

___Get to know the community by learning its history, spending time experiencing it, and establishing relationships with its members.

___Determine what will motivate the community to organize.

___Identify opinion leaders and other trusted individuals and groups, and work with them.

___Recruit people to the effort.

___Establish a communication system.

___Encourage leadership from within the community.

___Create a structure as a focus for the development effort.

___Define the most important issues that relate to the community's overall concerns.

___Develop a strategic plan.

___Continually monitor and evaluate your work.

___Make the locality development effort self-sustaining and community-run, so that it's established as a permanent fixture.

A PowerPoint presentation summarizing the major points in the section.

Sometimes, the impetus for community health and development efforts comes from social planners and policymakers. For instance, data on levels of disease, educational outcomes, or other community conditions may be used to raise issues on the public agenda. This section discusses how social planning approaches can inform change efforts.

What do we mean by social planning and policy change?

Social planning is the process by which policymakers - legislators, government agencies, planners, and, often, funders - try to solve community problems or improve conditions in the community by devising and implementing policies intended to have certain results.  These policies may take the form of laws, regulations, incentives, media campaigns, programs or services, information - a wide range of possibilities.  A community or state Board of Health that adopts a regulation banning smoking in particular places, for example, is trying both to protect the public from secondhand smoke and to reduce smoking in general.

There is a long history in the U.S. and elsewhere of social planning. Traditionally, this has often meant that policymakers decided what they thought was good for a community or a population, and developed policies intended to bring about the results they wanted.  At best, this has meant programs that benefited large numbers of people - Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Head Start, various public health programs.  At worst, social planning has been used largely for the economic or political benefit of policymakers and their friends and supporters.

In other cases, well-intentioned planning has led to negative consequences. Urban renewal in the 1950s and '60s, for instance, was often intended to replace deteriorating housing and stimulate economic development. In practice, many projects displaced residents, disrupted established social networks, and destroyed intact communities, while the benefits of redevelopment often went primarily to people and businesses that came later.

Social planning, however, doesn't have to take a wholly top-down form.  Starting in the 1960s, many social programs carried requirements for community participation in planning and implementing programs and initiatives. (The Model Cities Program, a major initiative of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, is one example.) While these requirements were not always implemented meaningfully, they acknowledged that social initiatives can produce stronger policy when those affected by them participate in creating and carrying them out.

Top-down planning, though often well-meaning, may fail to take into account the realities of the situation it is addressing. This failure can stem from:

• Limited knowledge of the community, and of the fact that what works in one community may not work in another. Community social patterns, history (especially past attempts to deal with the issue in question), or economics may work, individually or in combination, to create a unique situation. That situation has to be understood before effective policy can be created.
• Limited understanding of the lives and experiences of those whom the plan is intended to affect. The experiences, cultural expectations, and priorities of immigrant groups or people from particular racial, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds may differ significantly from those of the people doing the planning.  Economic circumstances can create equally significant differences in how people experience institutions, opportunities, and daily life. If policymakers don't understand the perspectives, strengths, circumstances, and actual needs of the people they hope to affect, their policies may be less effective or create unintended burdens.
• Unintended consequences that are not apparent initially.  Sometimes, a plan or policy that seems positive on its face has results that are profoundly negative. Public housing built in the U.S. after World War II was intended to provide safe and affordable housing for people with lower incomes.  In many places, however, discriminatory housing policies, concentrated poverty, physical isolation, inadequate maintenance and investment, and other systemic conditions contributed to deteriorating living conditions and limited opportunities for residents.

• Policymakers' lack of experience in the field.  Practitioners - especially those who also have academic credentials - know that the difference between theory and reality can often be vast.  When logical, best-possible-scenario initiatives or interventions come up against limited resources, local conditions, political maneuvering, substance use, mistrust arising from past experiences, or conflicts among organizations and groups, they don't always work the way planners think they should.

In addition, social planning can be used to further goals that have little to do with the welfare or advancement of those who are affected by them.  Such goals may be intended to benefit friends or supporters of powerful politicians, or simply to generate political advantage.  In these cases, policies may be poorly planned, administered, or aligned with community needs.  On the other hand, the goals may be appropriate and worthwhile, but aren't effectively addressed because of a lack of skill, resources, coordination, or will on the part of those assigned to carry them out.  Meaningful community participation can help reduce the likelihood that the social planning process fails in these ways.

The Community Tool Box sees social planning and policy change as a partnership between the community and policymakers to create policy that brings about positive social change.  As a result, we will look at social planning and policy change from two angles:

• a.  From the policymaker's perspective, i.e., how to use the social planning process to create policy that achieves its goals while producing the best possible results for the community.
• b.  From a grassroots perspective, i.e., how to approach policymakers at the beginning of the process, so that those in the community affected by the policy change can participate meaningfully in planning and implementing it.

Why should policymakers engage in a participatory social planning process?

We've already mentioned that many federal and other grants require some form of community participation as a condition of funding.  We've also mentioned, however, that participation can sometimes become largely symbolic, with "community boards" or advisory groups having little real influence over decisions.  In addition, community participation, as we will discuss later in this section, is a process that demands time, commitment, organization, and a good deal of work from everyone concerned.  Why, then, is it worth it to policymakers - who may have the authority to develop plans without extensive community participation - to involve the community in social planning and policy change?

There are, in fact, a number of compelling reasons, both short- and long-term:

• Community participation makes it more likely that you'll come up with policy that's effective. Without the knowledge of the history and social structure of the community that community members can contribute, there's a risk of serious error.  Attempting to repeat something that didn't work in the past, or assuming that particular groups will work together when actually they've been at odds for years, can undermine a community development effort before it starts.  Furthermore, community members can help policymakers and planners understand the actual needs, strengths, and priorities of the community, so that important problems and issues can be addressed.
• Community participation can lead to greater community ownership and support of initiatives that come out of a social planning effort. When people have meaningful roles in planning and decision-making, they are more likely to see the resulting effort as something they helped shape and to support its implementation.  Plans developed without meaningful community participation may have a much harder time earning the same level of trust and support.
• Policymakers - particularly elected officials - may also benefit politically from meaningful community involvement. They may be seen as respecting their constituents and can gain credibility when initiatives they support prove responsive and effective.  Helping improve the quality of life for community members can strengthen public trust.
• Community members can inform policymakers about changes in circumstances that demand changes in policy over time.  What is effective or appropriate today may not be in five years.  Community participation creates ongoing connections to people who can identify changes that policymakers may not immediately see and can help keep programs and initiatives responsive rather than allowing them to become outmoded or stale.
• Community participation can create community relationships and partnerships among diverse groups who can then work together. By involving many sectors of the community, it can bring together groups and individuals who would normally have little contact with one another and help them understand where their common interests lie.
• Community participation can help keep community building going over the long run. By sharing meaningful planning and decision-making power with the community, the process can build relationships, leadership, and commitment that continue even when political conditions or individual leaders change.
• Community participation can contribute to institutionalizing the changes brought about by changes in policy. Community members are more likely to support policies they had a meaningful role in creating.  Continued support and participation can help those changes become established over time.
• Community participation can strengthen confidence in the community's ability to create positive change. When community members see that their participation has influenced decisions or produced meaningful results, they may be more willing to take on new challenges and continue working for change.

Why should the community engage in a participatory social planning process?

While it might seem obvious that communities and grassroots groups would want to participate in planning and carrying out policy, that's not always the case.  People may feel it's someone else's responsibility, or simply may not have the time, resources, or energy to be involved in a planning effort.  Community members who have had few opportunities to participate in formal decision-making may also find the process unfamiliar or intimidating.  They may be unsure how meetings and planning processes work, may question whether their knowledge will be valued, or may have previous experiences that give them reason to doubt whether they will actually be listened to.

It can take time and effort to make meaningful participation possible. Community members may benefit from orientation, mentoring, accessible meeting formats, interpretation, childcare, transportation, scheduling accommodations, or other forms of support that reduce barriers to participation. At the same time, the process itself may need to change so that participation does not depend on familiarity with professional meetings or planning language. Establishing trust in the process and the policymakers may require substantial community organizing - door-to-door canvassing, personal conversations, small meetings in people's homes or community spaces - before people are willing to invest their time and trust in the process.

The rewards for the community, however, can be great. Many of the reasons for the community to embrace participation are reflections of the reasons why policymakers would want it.  Some of them are:

• Participation provides the opportunity to educate policymakers about the community's actual needs, strengths, and concerns.  As we've discussed, when policymakers plan without sufficient knowledge of the community, their plans may fail because they don't account for the realities of the situation and the needs of the population they're intended to affect.  Community members can help policymakers understand their lives - the difficulties they face, the strengths and resources they bring, and what they believe needs to be addressed.
• Participation allows community members to help create policy that works to meet their needs.  By participating in policy development, community members can help shape policies that improve their lives rather than having little effect or creating unintended burdens.
• Participation recognizes community members as partners whose knowledge and experience matter.  Rather than being viewed primarily as recipients of services or as people defined by the problems being addressed, community members engaged in a participatory social planning process can contribute as colleagues and concerned residents working to improve their community.  Their lived experience, skills, knowledge, and effort can all strengthen the planning process.
• Participation gives community members greater influence over decisions that affect their lives.  A participatory social planning and policy development process gives community members an opportunity to help determine what policies will work for them and to advocate for changes when those policies are not working.  It puts into practice the motto of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council in Chicago, founded with the involvement of legendary organizer Saul Alinsky: "We, the people, will work out our own destiny."
• Participation builds community leadership from within.  Those who take part in the process can learn and exercise leadership skills, develop relationships, and gain experience influencing decisions that affect their communities.
• Participation can prepare the community to take on other issues or policy decisions in the future.  The relationships, knowledge, skills, and confidence developed through one planning process can strengthen later community development efforts.
• Participation can contribute to long-term social change.  As community members develop greater ability to influence decisions and institutions that affect their lives, they can help create and sustain changes that improve quality of life throughout the community.

When is social planning and policy change appropriate?

Unlike locality development and social action, the other two types of community organizing discussed in this chapter (see Sections 2 and 4), social planning generally originates with policymakers, public agencies, funders, or organizations working on their behalf.  From a policymaker's point of view, social planning may be appropriate when:

• The community asks for it. A community problem may have reached the point where community members feel something needs to be done, but believe additional expertise, authority, funding, or other resources are needed. They may ask policymakers or an outside source for help.
• An issue or problem has reached crisis proportions, and it's obvious that something must be done.  It sometimes takes one or more specific events - the widespread civil unrest in many American cities in 1968, for instance, or the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks - to set major planning processes in motion.  In other cases, however, the process may be a response to an ongoing condition (e.g., rising unemployment or increasing youth violence).
• There is a long-standing major issue - poverty, violence, housing, hunger, etc. - that has attracted policymakers' attention. Because of media coverage, public concern, advocacy, or other factors, elected officials, agencies, or others in a position to act recognize a need to respond.

• There are resources made available to address the issue.  The federal, state, or local government may decide to appropriate funds for a specific purpose, for instance, or a large foundation might turn its attention - and financial resources - to a specific issue.

• A powerful figure - a president or prime minister, a leader in Congress or Parliament, a governor, a mayor - is concerned about a particular problem, issue, or population and determines to do something about it.
• A strategic or economic planning process that policymakers engage in determines that a particular issue must be addressed, or that particular communities or populations need additional resources or support.
• It becomes apparent - on the municipal, state or provincial, or federal level - that there is a broader economic, social, and/or environmental decline that needs to be addressed.

Social planning can be appropriate from a community perspective at all these times as well.  If the community has not already initiated action - either to address the problem or to seek help in doing so - additional resources, technical expertise, policy authority, or institutional support may help make action possible.

Who should be involved in social planning and policy change?

Again, social planning is different from both locality development and social action. In locality development, people from across a town or area's many sectors and backgrounds should be represented in the effort.  In social action, participation may center especially on the people and organizations affected by an inequity and working together to build power and change it.  The number and character of the important participants in a social planning process fall somewhere between these two approaches.

For social planning to work well, policymakers and the stakeholders affected by the issue should have meaningful opportunities to participate; broad representation can strengthen the process. "Stakeholders" is a term that includes those directly affected in some way by the potential policy changes or by the issues under discussion. Some examples of stakeholders include:

• Those whom a policy is intended to benefit.
• Those whose activities a policy may regulate or restrict in some way. Land use policy, for instance, may place restrictions on developers, so their perspective should be represented in discussing and creating it, although it should not automatically outweigh the interests of residents or other affected groups.  They are one interested party among many.
• Those who will have to administer or enforce the policy.
• Those who work with or serve a population that is directly affected by a policy. This category may include health or human service workers, educators, clergy, etc.
• Organizations or businesses that stand to gain or lose revenue or other resources, or will have to alter their mode of operation because of a potential change in policy.
• Policymakers and public officials.

How can policymakers engage effectively in social planning and policy change?

As a policymaker, you may have concerns over and above the outcomes of whatever policy you establish. You probably have to keep an eye on costs, deadlines, political consequences, legal requirements, and other factors that influence policy, but don't necessarily relate directly to whether a particular policy is workable or whether it benefits or harms those it's intended to affect.  It may be tempting to skip community participation entirely and simply create a plan and implement it.

As tempting as it may be to save time and be "efficient," it usually makes more sense to invest the time necessary to build understanding, meaningful participation, and as much support as possible for a new policy. You're likely to be more successful if you approach the process not simply as an expert with answers for the community, but as a policymaker who brings particular knowledge and authority while recognizing the knowledge and experience community members bring as well.

Community participation is an important goal for almost any community organizer, and community participation starts one person at a time. In the previous section, we describe the process for making contacts, building trust in the community, and ultimately involving many sectors in community assessment and in the planning, carrying out, and evaluation of activities and policies aimed at improving the quality of life.  Policymakers, if they're serious about community involvement and participation, should engage in that process as well.

As a policymaker, you have advantages and disadvantages in this process. You're a known quantity, so people may understand your role from the beginning, but your office, agency, or institution may also carry a reputation in the community that is not always positive. Some people may distrust officials because of past experiences or because they have seen previous participation efforts produce little change. You'll have to demonstrate through your actions that participation is meaningful and that community knowledge will be taken seriously.

For these reasons, and because you're coming into a community with an idea of what area you're going to address, the process of organizing is a little different than it might be for either locality development (Section 2 of this chapter) or social action (Section 4).  Something is going to go forward; the organizing task here is to involve the community, and particularly the people most affected, as meaningfully as possible in every phase of the effort and to be guided by their knowledge and needs along with relevant evidence and professional expertise.

You may be working through one or more local organizations, or through a government or other agency that has a presence in the community.  Your credibility may depend partly on that of the organization or agency, so choose carefully.  If political convenience is the only consideration, you may end up with a process that has little community trust or meaningful participation.  Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's handling of community participation in the Model Cities Program, for example, was criticized for relying on appointed representatives closely tied to his political organization rather than giving residents substantial independent influence.

The bottom line is that people have to believe you're serious about including them, and you have to be serious about it. If you promise community involvement and don't follow through, or provide only token participation, whatever trust-building you've done may quickly evaporate. Once again, see Tool #1 for a full discussion of the levels of community participation, what they imply, and how and when they might be used.

How-to steps for policymakers to involve the community:

• Make contact with agencies, organizations, and individuals that know the community well, and use their knowledge and credibility to help build connections.  They can help you avoid the kinds of tactical errors that unfamiliarity with the community can easily lead to.   They can also introduce you to people who are trusted by those whom you want to involve, as well as to potential participants.

  • The same caution applies here as applies for all community organizers: make sure you're getting a range of perspectives and making contact with all the people you need to.  Community leaders, for instance, may not initially want to work with current or former gang members on ending youth violence, but people with firsthand knowledge of the groups and conditions involved may have information and relationships that are essential to an effective effort.  Spread your network wide, and use your contacts to make sure you're reaching people whose perspectives might otherwise be excluded, not just those whom your initial contacts recommend.

• Make your goals and process clear in small meetings that lead up to a larger one.  Meet both with formal groups - clubs, fraternal organizations, sports teams, faith-based groups, participants in health and human service programs, unions and other workers' groups, classes - and with families and groups of friends in people's homes or similar informal settings.  When appropriate, involve a trusted community member who can help make introductions, explain the effort, and answer questions about why the process is taking place.
• Hold a community meeting to explain your purpose and start recruiting community members to participate in assessment and planning. Encourage as many of the people you've talked to as possible to attend, and ask who is interested in staying involved in the process.  It might make sense for someone local to convene or help facilitate the meeting - a respected community leader or community member, or a facilitator who is trusted and skilled at making participation possible for people with different backgrounds and perspectives.
  • The meeting should explain clearly the issue or problem being considered and the participatory process by which you intend to address it. The audience should have an opportunity to ask questions and should be invited to share their views on the issue, what outcomes they'd like to see, what strengths and resources already exist, and how the planning process should take place. This is also a time to recruit members of the planning group and ask people to reach out to others who should be included.  Ideally, the smaller meetings have already helped build understanding and relationships.  With this larger meeting, the goal is to broaden participation and establish a foundation for the planning process.

• Schedule the next community meeting, and start the planning process. You should continue to hold community meetings at regular intervals to inform those who aren't directly involved in the planning about what's happening and create opportunities for continued input.  At the same time, a planning group representing the people and groups affected by the policies should begin to meet to work out logistics (meeting times and places, a timeline), procedures (how decisions are made, how and by whom the process will be coordinated), and the definition of its task.  Part of the group's job at the beginning is to determine what kinds of support participants need. Would orientation, technical assistance, interpretation, accessibility accommodations, childcare, transportation, or other support make participation easier? Are there things that everyone should know, such as relevant research, best practices, legal requirements, or previous efforts related to the issue?

  • The composition of the planning group is important. It should meaningfully represent the people and groups affected by the issue, and that may mean you or members of the group have to recruit others actively.  People who disagree with the proposed approach should not automatically be excluded. If the group establishes fair ground rules and skilled facilitation from the beginning, people with opposing ideas can participate in productive discussion and feel that their perspectives were heard and considered, even when their preferred approach is not adopted.

• Provide whatever training or support is necessary. Rather than assuming that particular people need training because of their income, education, language, or background, ask participants what would help them take part fully.  Training in meeting skills, strategic planning, policy processes, conflict resolution, data interpretation, or other areas may be useful for the group as a whole. Accessibility accommodations, interpretation, mentoring, childcare, transportation, compensation for community members' time, or other forms of support may also reduce barriers to participation. The goal is to make sure everyone has the information, resources, and opportunities needed to contribute, rather than allowing the process to be dominated by people who already have experience with professional meetings and planning systems.
  • Depending upon the scope of the change you're concerned with and the level of community involvement you're aiming for, you may not need to go through all these steps.  In some cases, keeping people informed and providing meaningful opportunities for feedback - through regular meetings, the media, e-mail, websites, social media, or other communication channels - may be appropriate.  In others, one or two public meetings with genuine opportunities for community input may be enough. If you're hoping for fuller participation and shared decision-making, however, taking the steps above makes sense.

How can communities engage effectively in social planning and policy change?

As we've discussed, there are several sections of the Community Tool Box that deal with how communities can initiate policy change. When the initiative comes from policymakers, the situation is somewhat different, since meaningful community participation may not automatically be built into the process.  Community leaders, organizations, activists, and residents may therefore need to raise the issue and advocate for a meaningful role in decisions that affect them. If policymakers resist participation and cannot be persuaded through discussion, negotiation, or advocacy, stronger forms of organizing or social action may become necessary.  Whenever possible, however, policymakers and the community may accomplish more by working as partners rather than treating one another as adversaries from the beginning.

How-to steps for community leaders and activists to ensure community involvement

• Get to know and maintain contact with policymakers from the beginning, so that when issues of policy arise, you'll have an open communication line.  Members of Congress, state legislators, city council members, county commissioners, mayors, members of municipal boards, and other officials are concerned with what community members think and generally have some means for constituents to contact them.  If you make the effort to develop relationships with them, they may be more willing to discuss issues with you.  When they initiate a policy change process, you'll be in a stronger position to approach them about making it participatory.
• Try to anticipate the community's policy needs, and approach policymakers before they have decided to act.  As a community member, you may have knowledge about emerging concerns, changing conditions, and local priorities that policymakers don't yet have. If you initiate the conversation about policy change, you may have a much better chance of helping shape a participatory planning process as well.
• Equip yourself with as much relevant information as possible, both about the benefits of a participatory process and about the issue itself. Read the research and literature about social change policy and inclusive, participatory process. Learn what other communities have done, search for relevant evidence and promising practices, and combine that information with local knowledge and experience. The stronger your understanding of both the issue and the community, the more effectively you can make your case.
• Mobilize the community.  Explain the value of meaningful participation to fellow community members and create accessible ways for them to become involved in policy decisions that affect them.  If it's clear that community members want to participate, are prepared to contribute to the process, and intend to support implementation of a policy they help create, policymakers may have a strong reason to include them as partners.

In Summary

Social planning can be an effective means of community organization and development, and of policy change, when it is entered into in a spirit of partnership with the community.  If, as either a policymaker or a community builder, you can make it a genuinely inclusive and participatory process that combines community knowledge with relevant evidence and expertise, it is more likely to produce useful, responsive, and lasting results for both policymakers and the community.

What do we mean by social planning and policy change?

___Social planning is the process by which policymakers try to solve community problems or improve conditions in the community by devising and implementing policies intended to have certain results.

___Current thinking and experience points to good social planning and policy change being connected to community participation in the process.

Why should policymakers engage in a participatory social planning process?

___Community participation makes it more likely that you'll come up with policy that's effective.

___Community participation leads to community ownership and support of whatever initiatives come out of a social planning effort.

___Policymakers, particularly elected officials, can gain politically from involving the community.

___Community members can inform policymakers about changes in circumstances that demand changes in policy over time.

___Community participation can create community relationships and partnerships among diverse groups, who can then work together.

___Community participation helps keep community building going over the long run.

__Community participation contributes to institutionalizing the changes brought about by changes in policy.

___Community participation energizes the community to continue to change in positive directions.

Why should the community engage in a participatory social planning process?

___Participation provides the opportunity to educate policymakers to the community's real needs and concerns.

___Participation allows community members to help create policy that really works to meet their needs.

___Participation affords community members the respect they deserve.

___Participation puts community members in control of their own fate.

___Participation builds community leadership from within.

___Participation energizes the community to take on other issues or policy decisions in the future, and to see itself as in control of its future.

___Participation leads to long-term social change.

When is social planning and policy change appropriate?

___When the community asks for it.

___When an issue or problem has reached crisis proportions, and it's obvious to everyone that something must be done.

___When there is a long-standing major issue - poverty, violence, housing, hunger, etc. - that has attracted policymakers attention.

___When there are resources made available to address the issue.

___When a powerful figure - a president or prime minister, a leader in Congress or Parliament, a governor, a mayor - is concerned about a particular problem, issue, or population, and determines to do something about it.

___When a strategic or economic planning process that policymakers engage in determines that a particular issue must be addressed, or that particular communities or populations need some kind of assistance.

___When it becomes apparent - on the municipal, state or provincial, or federal level - that there is a general economic, social, and/or environmental downhill slide that needs to be stopped.

Who should be involved in social planning and policy change?

___Those whom a policy is meant to benefit.

___Those whom a policy is meant to control in some way.

___Those who will have to administer or enforce the policy.

___Those who work with or serve a population that is directed affected by a policy.

___Organizations or businesses that stand to gain or lose revenue or other resources, or will have to alter their mode of operation because of a potential change in policy.

___Policymakers and public officials.

How can policymakers engage effectively in social planning and policy change?

___Make contact with agencies, organizations, and individuals that know the community well, and use their knowledge and credibility to ease your way in.

___Make your goals and process clear in small meetings that lead up to a larger one.

___Hold a community meeting to explain your purpose and start recruiting community members to participate in assessment and planning.

___Schedule the next community meeting, and start the planning process.

___Provide whatever training or support is necessary.

How can communities engage effectively in social planning and policy change?

___Get to know and maintain contact with policymakers from the beginning, so that when issues of policy arise, you'll have an open communication line.

___Try to anticipate the community's policy needs, and approach policymakers before they have decided to act.

___Equip yourself with as much information as possible, both about the benefits of a participatory process and about the issue itself. 

Arnstein’s Ladder and levels of participation

In a 1969 article, Sherry Arnstein, who drafted the community participation guidelines for the Model Cities Program, wrote how "participation” can mean whatever policymakers want it to mean, unless it’s very clearly defined.  She described a ladder of eight rungs of citizen involvement, of which only three actually entail real participation.

The first two rungs, which Arnstein calls manipulation and therapy, are actually non-participatory. In these instances, policymakers either manipulate or “educate” citizens to rubber stamp whatever they propose.

On the next three rungs, policymakers exercise what Arnstein refers to as various levels of tokenism:

•  Informing merely lets community members know what’s going on, without any input on their part.
•  Consultation asks community members for ideas and suggestions, but doesn't necessarily incorporate those ideas into a final policy or plan.
•  Placation throws the community a bone, by accommodating a particular (usually unimportant) suggestion or objection, but proceeding with the original overall plan.

In each of these cases, policymakers do something that they can call involving the community, when in reality they are merely paying lip service to community involvement requirements.

Only on the top three rungs is there true participation:

• Partnership brings negotiation and shared decision-making.
• Delegated power gives the decision-making to a body, a majority of whose members are from the community.
• Citizen control has the community managing the process from start to finish.

David Wilcox, in his Guide to Participation, has condensed Arnstein’s Ladder down to five levels, essentially the top six of Arnstein’s Ladder minus placation.  His point is that it isn’t always possible to have full participation, but it is important to try to maintain the highest level of participation possible, given the realities of the situation.  Pretending to involve the community when your goal is actually to shut it out of the process is both the worst kind of hypocrisy and also generally a good way to doom a policy to failure.

Information
The least you can do is tell people what is planned.

Consultation
You offer a number of options and listen to the feedback you get.

Deciding together
You encourage others to provide some additional ideas and options, and join in deciding the best way forward.

Acting together
Not only do different interests decide together what is best, but they form a partnership to carry it out.

• Supporting independent community initiatives: You help others do what they want - within a framework of grants, advice and support provided by the resource holder.

Each of these levels may be appropriate in different circumstances, or with different groups, although only at "deciding together" and above do they really become fully participatory in the sense that the term is used in this section.

When is participatory planning appropriate, and when isn’t it?

In addition to whatever feels right for the circumstances, there are some guidelines for when it might be appropriate to use each level of planning.  (In general, there seems to be an assumption here that each level incorporates the elements of those before it.  You can’t consult without information, for instance.)

Information-only may be appropriate when:

• The course of action has already been decided - by a federal law, for instance.
• You're simply reporting on something that's already in progress.
• You're keeping people informed so that they'll have the information to be part of a participatory effort later.

Consultation-only may be appropriate when:

• You want to evaluate or improve existing services.
• There are limited options and you're trying to choose among them.
• There are technical reasons - again, perhaps because of a law - why only certain people or groups can be officially involved in the planning process.

If you consult with people in the community, you have to pay attention to what they tell you. If you're simply going to ignore their ideas and recommendations, you shouldn't consult at all. Being asked for an opinion and then ignored is much more insulting and infuriating than never being asked in the first place. At the very least, people deserve an explanation of why their advice isn't being followed.

Deciding together may be appropriate when:

• It's important that everyone feel ownership of the plan.
• You want fresh ideas from as many sources as possible.
• You can pull in people whom the intervention will directly affect.
• There's a commitment to provide support through the process for those who need it.
• There's enough time.

In reality, as mentioned earlier, a planning process often is time-limited by the severity of the need (if teenagers are dying every day by gunfire, a violence prevention program needs to get under way quickly), the requirements of other partners, etc. The trick is to balance participation and time restraints, and to try to use the highest level of participation possible under the circumstances.

Acting together may be appropriate when:

• The intervention will be more effective than if it were run by a single entity.
• There is a requirement for community oversight.
• There is commitment to the development of a real partnership.
• Everyone benefits from acting together.
• One goal of the intervention is the eventual assumption of leadership or the learning of leadership skills by the target population and/or others in the community.

The word "partnership" implies a relationship of equals, where everyone has an equal voice, and where power and responsibility are equally shared. Forming such a relationship, even in circumstances where everyone truly desires it, is not a quick or easy task. It takes time, commitment both to the process and the end product (the partnership), and the willingness to air and work through disagreements and philosophical differences. If you're not willing to give yourself to the development of a real partnership, acting together may be only a future goal.

Supporting local initiatives may be appropriate when:

• There is a commitment to community empowerment.
• The community has the desire and at least some of the tools to start and run a successful intervention.
• There is a commitment to provide training and support where needed.
• One of the points of the social action effort is to have it administered by the community.

As you try to determine what level of participation is right for your situation, consider this: A participatory planning process has the potential to become a charade meant only to convince the community that a participatory process is going on.

An adult educator related a conversation with his father-in-law, who worked in a factory of one of the big Detroit automakers. The company had initiated Total Quality Management, and had reorganized the factory workers into teams. Each team included workers from each step in the car manufacturing process, and was meant to be responsible for the building of a whole car from start to finish. Furthermore, each team was supposed to be able to change its procedures to make them more efficient or easier, and thus to improve production through the knowledge and skill of team members.

Knowing that his father-in-law was a longtime union activist and socialist, the younger man said, "That must be great. The workers actually have some control over production." The father-in-law, however, quickly burst the bubble. "No, it's the same as it was before, except now they make us sit in meetings and tell them what we think before they ignore us. Nothing has changed. They're just going through the motions, so they can tell the public they're doing something different."

There are also some general guidelines for when a participatory planning process may not be appropriate at all, including:

• When there's simply no time. A grant may have to be written immediately, for instance, or a situation - youth violence, perhaps - may have reached such crisis proportions that it must be addressed immediately. In such a circumstance, it may be possible to do some participatory planning after the fact, either to adjust policy before it takes effect, or to plan its next phase.
• When a community is so sharply divided, it's impossible to get all - or even any - of the rival factions to the same table.
• When there's no feasible way to provide proper support - facilitation, structure, etc. - for the process.
• When the target population is simply not interested in participating, and just wants the policymakers to take care of it. One goal may be to get them interested, but that may have to be part of the intervention, rather than part of the planning process.
• When the results of the process rest on technical knowledge of a kind that the target population and community members simply don't have.
• When involving all or most stakeholders simply isn't logistically possible, because of distance, time, or other issues.
• When there is no trust between you and the community.  Obviously, you can and should try to build that trust, but it may not be possible.

A PowerPoint presentation summarizing the major points in the section.

• What is social action?

• Why engage in social action?

• When should you engage in social action?

• Who should be involved in social action?

• How do you engage in social action?

Sometimes, the best way to inspire change is to confront decision makers through organized, collective action. This is called social action, and it can range from organizing a letter-writing campaign to assembling thousands of people at a state or national capital to protest government actions. This section looks at organizing communities to engage in social action - why and how to do it, when it's appropriate, and what it might accomplish.

What is social action?

Social action is the practice of taking action – usually as part of an organized group or community – to create positive change. Sometimes social action can lead to profound social change, as in the case of the Civil Rights Movement; sometimes social action seeks more limited and specific changes – the preservation of an open space, for example, or better pay for a specific group of workers.

Social action, by its nature, is often practiced by people and communities whose perspectives or interests have historically had less influence in political, economic, or social decision-making – including people experiencing poverty, people from underrepresented groups, or people with disabilities – but it may be used by any group that feels its concerns are being ignored. By working together, members of these groups can build and exercise collective power through their numbers, the media, voting, boycotts, and other forms of social, political, and economic pressure to persuade decision makers to reconsider their positions.

A few of the numerous reasons that a group might engage in social action:  

• To ensure that policy considerations include the interests and perspectives of people and communities that have historically been underrepresented in these discussions, including communities with limited economic resources and other underrepresented groups.
• To institute fairer policies and eliminate discrimination.
• To address past wrongs, as in providing apologies and restitution to Japanese Americans who were unjustly and unconstitutionally incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II.
• To prevent harm to the community. This might mean challenging the siting of an industrial facility because of pollution concerns, for instance.
• To gain particular benefits to the community, or a part of the community, sometimes on quite a small scale.
• To preserve something of historical or social value.
• To include in policy deliberations people whose perspectives have historically been excluded, as in, for example, involving community members from underrepresented groups on a police review board.

These are only a small number of the nearly endless possible reasons for engaging in social action. Just as there are many reasons you might take action, there are many different kinds of action you might take, ranging from explaining your situation to policy makers to confronting force with civil disobedience. Some examples:

• Organizing a group to write letters, make phone calls, or send e-mails to policy makers, particularly legislators, in order to make both your position and the extent of your constituency known.
• Encouraging the media to cover events or publish stories that highlight particular issues, document the positions or actions of public officials and other decision makers, and help the public understand what is at stake. You might also plan events particularly to attract the media.
• Putting together or backing a slate of candidates for public office. This may entail anything from stuffing envelopes to going door to door discussing the issues to driving voters to the polls.
• Attending a public meeting as a group, offering testimony or public comment, and otherwise making visible the number of people concerned about an issue being discussed.
• Performing street theater. Street theater, as its name implies, is theater performed in public that is meant to ridicule the opposition and/or to convey a profound message in a way that is easily understood and  entertaining. It goes back at least to ancient Greece, continued through the Middle Ages in morality plays and puppet shows, and has been used in modern times, particularly since the mid-Twentieth Century, for political protest.

The Bread and Puppet Theater, now based in Vermont, was known particularly during the Vietnam War for its political street productions featuring huge puppets and its custom of sharing bread with the audience.

• Organizing demonstrations, rallies and marches. The “classic” social actions, these often involve signs, speeches, entertainment, and/or elements of street theater.
• Picketing or organizing a strike. These are, of course, time-honored labor tactics, usually applied to a particular plant or corporation or industry. There is also the possibility of a general strike – a situation where everyone in a group, a community, or even a whole country, refuses to work for a day, a few days, or indefinitely until those in power accede to demands.
• Organizing a boycott. Named after Charles Boycott, a British land agent in Ireland who was ostracized (i.e., no Irish would deal or communicate with him) for his policies, a boycott consists of refusing to deal or trade with a company (or a city, state, or country) that the boycotters believe is doing something morally wrong.
• Organizing a sit-in. Sometimes an act of civil disobedience, this involves a group remaining in a public or institutional space – perhaps an official's office, a courtyard, a building, or a park – in order to make a moral or political point, assert a right to use the space, or press decision makers to negotiate. Depending on the location and circumstances, participants should understand applicable rules, legal risks, and possible consequences beforehand.

Civil disobedience is a particular kind of action in which participants intentionally violate a law, rule, or order as an act of conscience. They may do so because they are protesting the law itself or because they believe a deliberate nonviolent violation is necessary to call attention to an injustice. Anyone considering civil disobedience should understand the legal and personal risks, including the possibility of arrest, court proceedings, fines, or other consequences, and should make an informed choice about whether to participate.

Social action is probably what most people think of when they hear the term “community organizing.” It is the type of organizing that Saul Alinsky, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, and other well-known 20th Century organizers primarily engaged in. It is meant to help people who have historically been excluded from political or social decision-making build collective power and greater influence over the conditions that affect their lives. For this reason, the “Iron Rule” of community organizing is never to do for people what they can do for themselves.

One of the most influential figures in modern community organizing was Saul Alinsky, who, in the late 1930s, helped bring together workers and neighborhood institutions in Chicago's Back of the Yards area to form the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. Alinsky worked through existing organizations – unions, churches, and fraternal organizations – to build a political base among workers and residents who had experienced exploitation and limited influence. The effort contributed to improvements in working conditions, pay, and neighborhood conditions, and the organization continues to operate.

Citizens for New York City (CitizensNYC) supports neighborhood leaders across New York City through grants, capacity-building, and other resources for community-led projects.

Alinsky’s type of organizing is based on building political power and using it to engage, pressure, and when necessary confront decision makers through social action so that community interests cannot easily be ignored. This approach is still widely used, especially in situations where decision-making power has long been concentrated. The larger organization that Alinsky founded to carry his work around the country, the Industrial Areas Foundation, explains its strategy on its website:

"The IAF is non-ideological and strictly non-partisan, but proudly, publicly, and persistently political. The IAF builds a political base within society's rich and complex third sector - the sector of voluntary institutions that includes religious congregations, labor locals, homeowner groups, recovery groups, parents associations, settlement houses, immigrant societies, schools, seminaries, orders of men and women religious, and others. And then the leaders use that base to compete at times, to confront at times, and to cooperate at times with leaders in the public and private sectors."

This is probably as good an explanation as any of what social action is meant to do.

Why engage in social action?

Social action can sometimes be confrontational and contentious. It can also involve real risks, as shown by the violence experienced by Civil Rights marchers and organizers in the 1960s and by striking farm workers in California in the 1960s and '70s. If you choose to practice civil disobedience, you may face arrest, fines, court proceedings, or other consequences. Even lower-risk actions – sending letters to the editor, for instance – may create disagreement or criticism within the community. So why would you choose to use these methods?

There are several reasons why social action is often the appropriate choice:

• It can energize communities and strengthen the collective power of people who have historically had limited influence. The experience of participating in an action – especially if it produces visible progress – can be powerful for people who have rarely seen themselves influence the course of events. It can change what they believe is possible and help prepare and sustain them for a long struggle to achieve far-reaching goals.

This can be true even for people who may not have been part of the original action.  Witnessing what people like themselves can accomplish may inspire others either to join the current effort, or to join – or even start – similar efforts in the future.

• It can unify communities. Collective action brings people together in the way that many collaborative activities do. It creates a spirit of shared effort and shared passion, and binds individuals into a community of shared purpose.
• It can demonstrate to the larger community that the organized group has meaningful support and influence. Decision makers and other community members may have to take its needs and interests seriously, even when they disagree with its position.
• It may be necessary when decision makers repeatedly refuse to address a serious concern. Those targeted by social action may have held power for a long time, may benefit from existing arrangements, or may simply reject the need for change. It may take a sustained campaign to persuade or pressure them to address community concerns.

Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) worked for years in Little Rock and across Arkansas to organize Black and White residents with low and moderate incomes around shared economic interests and to build enough power to achieve increasingly significant victories. In the 1970s, organizers were working in a state still deeply shaped by segregation and racial inequality, and many political and economic institutions were unresponsive to the concerns of people experiencing poverty. ACORN combined legal strategies with social action to press for economic justice when conversation alone had produced little change.

• It may be seen as morally necessary. Social action can be hard and unpopular. People generally engage in it because they believe their cause is right, and may see it as their moral duty to do something about it.

When the writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay a tax to support the Mexican War, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, the philosopher, asked him “Why are you in there?” Thoreau replied with his own question: “Why are you not in here?” He clearly saw his action as a moral issue.

• It can motivate people to take other kinds of positive action. Once people see that collective action can influence what happens in their communities, they may become more willing to take on other kinds of tasks – starting cooperatives, rehabilitating deteriorated housing, cleaning up neighborhoods, or organizing around new issues. They may also develop skills, relationships, and confidence that strengthen future community efforts.
• It can be the beginning of a process that leads to a more collaborative larger community. Once a group has demonstrated that its members are organized and that their concerns cannot simply be ignored, there may be greater opportunity for negotiation, accommodation, and eventual collaboration with people or institutions that were once opponents.
• It can lead to long-term positive social change. Social action, like other forms of community organizing, generally has long-term as well as short-term goals. While the purpose of a particular action might be narrowly defined, the long-term goals of many organizing efforts are greater equity and social and economic justice. A well-managed social action campaign that maintains its momentum over the long haul can broaden participation and help change institutions, policies, and public expectations. A major example is the Civil Rights Movement, whose sustained organizing and action helped build national support for dismantling legally enforced segregation and expanding civil rights.

In another example from ACORN, the association’s initial actions were aimed at obtaining furniture and clothing benefits that people receiving public assistance were entitled to under Arkansas law. As ACORN grew stronger and added more groups to its membership, it advocated for working-class homeowners and helped stop construction of a power plant that organizers believed would seriously harm farming in the area. Over time, ACORN expanded nationally and internationally and worked on affordable housing, fair lending, living-wage jobs, schools, and other economic and social justice issues. The original U.S. national organization later ceased operations, while ACORN International and newer U.S. affiliates continue related organizing today.

Just as there are many reasons to engage in social action, there may be reasons not to. In general, it makes sense to use the least escalatory method that is likely to achieve your goals. If meaningful progress can be made through collaboration, negotiation, persuasion, or compromise, you may preserve relationships and keep more options open for the future. More confrontational forms of social action are usually most useful when lower-key approaches have failed or when circumstances make stronger action necessary. Some times when social action would be unwise:

• When you can achieve your goals through lower-key means – negotiation, acceptable trade-offs, persuasion, compromise, or other collaborative approaches.
• When you don’t yet have the participation, organization, or resources needed for the action to have a reasonable chance of advancing your goals. In that case, you may still have organizing work to do before taking larger public action.
• When you’re operating on rumor rather than fact. Make sure you know that you’re taking action about something real, rather than gossip or fourth-hand reports. You can discredit your whole effort by failing to check your facts.
• When an action, even if successful, could have disastrous social or political consequences. In some instances, you could gain your immediate demand at the cost of creating a backlash that drives your cause back beyond where you started. Social action may still be warranted here – the Civil Rights Movement certainly could be described in these terms, especially at the beginning – but you should be aware of its consequences, both to your cause and to the individuals and groups involved.

When should you engage in social action?

• When negotiation and other lower-key approaches don’t produce satisfactory results. Sometimes, discussion and compromise do not lead to meaningful change. Decision makers may reject the concern, protect existing interests, or offer changes that do not adequately address the issue.
• When time is short. The chainsaws are already running in a threatened old-growth forest; the wrecking ball is moving toward a historic building; legislators are about to make a major cut to food assistance or another essential program. In these cases and many like them, rapid action may be one of the few ways to draw attention to what is about to happen before the decision becomes difficult or impossible to reverse.

The implication here is that time may be short because what’s about to happen can’t be reversed once it’s done. You might be able to change a law, or to challenge it in court; but you can’t bring back an old-growth forest or a historic building.

• When the time is right. The issue may be gaining recognition in the media or public opinion, or public opinion may be changing in your favor. You may have a window of opportunity here. An action at the right time can solidify support, and really put your effort over the top.
• When you have the resources to make action possible. Just having the resources– enough people, money, media contacts, etc. – is hardly an excuse for engaging in action, but it’s a necessary foundation for doing so.
• When you want to make a dramatic statement that will focus public attention. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, but ending legally enforced segregation on the city's buses required a sustained community campaign. The Montgomery bus boycott lasted more than a year, drew national attention, and placed substantial economic pressure on the city's transit system. Ultimately, the federal courts ruled bus segregation unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed that ruling to stand, Montgomery's buses were integrated, and the boycott ended.
• When you want to energize the community, strengthen collective power, and develop community leadership. Social action gets people moving and gives them opportunities to exercise leadership, make decisions, and see the effects of collective effort. It can strengthen people's confidence in their ability to influence the rules, policies, and decisions that affect their lives.
• When you want to catch the attention of the public – and the media – and build public support around an issue or your community's concerns. In a constant stream of news and information, it’s easy for a local issue or community perspective to receive little attention. Social action can make people more aware of your cause and the people affected by it.

The national grape boycott that grew out of the Delano grape strike beginning in 1965, and expanded across North America in the following years, brought widespread attention to the working conditions of farm workers. Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, the United Farm Workers, and thousands of farm workers and supporters used strikes, boycotts, marches, organizing, and negotiation to build public support and win union contracts that improved pay and working conditions.

Who should engage in social action?

Social action is often strongest when people whose interests are directly at stake have meaningful leadership in deciding whether and how to act. This is a case where the Iron Rule definitely applies. Those who may experience the consequences of an action should have a central role in deciding whether it is necessary. They should understand possible consequences – including political backlash, legal risk, harm to relationships, or physical danger – and make informed decisions about whether the potential benefits justify those risks.

There are really two constituencies to organize here. Alinsky approached already-existing organizations in the community – unions, fraternal and service organizations, churches – and enlisted their members through them. But in the efforts of Cesar Chavez and others to organize farm workers and gain concessions from growers, organizing usually had to concentrate on individuals.

Many migrant and seasonal farm workers had few durable organizations they could rely on across the places where they worked. Because workers often followed seasonal agricultural jobs across regions and states, they had limited opportunities to build long-lasting local organizations, and growers could retaliate against workers involved in union organizing. Churches and other community institutions also did not necessarily travel with workers from one location to another. As a result, organizers often approached workers as individuals and small groups in order to build an organization that could plan and coordinate actions across locations.

The answer to who should be involved in social action, then, is both organizations and institutions that include and represent the community in question, and individuals who can form groups where there are none.

How do you engage in social action?

Social action is different from locality development…but not entirely. Both start with some of the most important parts of community organizing – getting to know the community and its members, making direct contact, listening, and building trust and relationships. The steps to getting the community involved are discussed in detail in Section 2 of this chapter, Locality Development. We’ll review them briefly here, and add some details that are specific to organizing for social action.

Once the community is involved and a structure for action has been created – and it’s been determined from that process that social action is what’s needed in this situation – planning is the next step. Plans then have to be turned into action, and your strategy carried out. Finally, you have to follow up, evaluate what you’ve done, and decide what your next step will be.

Preparing for social action

• Get to know the community. Learn community history, priorities, relationships, and culture. Get acquainted with as many people as possible – have conversations not just about politics or social issues, but about everyday life, families, work, interests, and your own reasons for being involved. In other words, build genuine relationships rather than treating people only as potential participants in a campaign.
• Identify the issues that are likely to lead the community to social action. Social action often involves a community whose members believe their concerns have been ignored or whose influence has historically been limited. What is important enough to move people to act?
  
  The answer to this question, if it is to lead to anything, must come from the community itself. In meetings with individuals and groups, especially those in which community members discuss issues with one another, the major community concerns should surface. An organizer can sometimes help clarify or connect concerns that people are already expressing, but should avoid imposing a frame that does not reflect how community members understand the issue. Often, the organizer’s task is to help people see possible paths from concern to collective action.
• Identify and contact key individuals and groups. Starting with trusted and respected individuals and groups can help you build connections throughout the community. If a faith leader, neighborhood leader, or another trusted person introduces you, or if you’re working with a well-known and respected community-based organization or institution, people may be more willing to hear what you have to say. These individuals and groups can also help you avoid damaging mistakes by explaining relationships within the community, past organizing efforts, and other factors that might affect your work.
   
  As we discussed earlier in this section, whether you concentrate on individuals or groups may depend on the situation of the community you’re approaching. Where groups exist – churches, unions, community-based health and human service organizations, fraternal and service organizations, etc. – most organizers would try to use them as a base, since they already have members and structure. Where there are no or few functioning groups, key individuals are much more important, both in gaining access to others in the community, and in bringing people together.
  
  Even where there are many groups in the community, your first contacts will usually be with individuals. How those individuals – clergy persons, organization directors, business owners – view you may well determine whether their organizations will join the effort. Thus, establishing relationships with key individuals is often the first step toward successful community organizing.
• Recruit community members to the effort. This is the heart of any community organizing campaign. It involves direct and personal contact, which may include door-to-door canvassing, meetings in people’s homes or community spaces, public meetings, conversations in everyday gathering places, phone calls, texts, or online communication. Face-to-face contact can be especially valuable for building relationships, but the important principles are honesty about your purposes and goals, openness, accessibility, and respect. Use the communication methods that make sense for the community and make participation possible.

You also can’t build trust based on false premises. Be whoever you are – don’t try to pretend you’ve grown up working class, for instance, if you haven’t. What many would-be organizers often don’t understand is that you don’t have to pretend. Be comfortable with yourself and others will be comfortable with you, regardless of who you are, as long as it’s clear that you respect them for who they are. Be willing to learn, and others will be willing to teach. Never talk down to anyone, but don’t hesitate to use what you know in the service of your effort and the people you’re working with.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the courtier Polonius is often mocked for his pomposity by both characters in the play and audiences. If you pay careful attention, however, you realize he is both honorable and wise. In his advice to his son, he speaks lines that are remarkably relevant to anyone who wants to engage in community organizing: “This above all: to thine own self be true,/ And it must follow, as the night the day,/ Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Recruiting community members may take some time. Gaining the trust of a community, especially one that has experienced harm, exclusion, broken promises, or disrespect from outside institutions, is not an overnight task. Organizing often proceeds one relationship at a time. One person introduces you to others, who in turn make additional connections.

This may take a while, but participation can grow as trust and relationships develop, especially when people feel that the effort genuinely belongs to them. For this reason, it’s extremely important not to approach a community with a predetermined plan for what the community should do, but to let priorities and direction emerge from the people themselves.

Saul Alinsky, in organizing the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC) in Chicago in 1939, partnered with Joe Meegan, the respected manager of a local park. As individuals and organizations were recruited, it was clear that the people would make the decisions about what direction the organization would take and what it would do. The motto of the BYNC was (and still is), “We the people will work out our own destiny.”

• Build a communication system. As you recruit individuals and groups and start to plan and carry out a social action strategy, it becomes crucial that people be able to contact one another and that information can be shared quickly and reliably. Phone calls, text or messaging groups, e-mail, social media, in-person contact, and other accessible methods can all be part of that system.
• Encourage leadership from the community from the beginning. Some of the key individuals you contact may not be identified as “community leaders,” but may be trusted people whom others listen to. They are already exercising leadership, with or without the title. Others may be ready to take on new leadership roles when given opportunities, support, and experience. The sooner the effort makes space for community members to lead, the more likely the community will be able to “work out its own destiny.”
• Create a structure to help the community accomplish its goals. Once enough individuals and groups are committed to the effort to sustain coordinated work, it may be time to pull them together into an organization or other structure that makes it possible to work through differences and plan and implement a coordinated social action strategy.
  
  The other great advantage of an organization or other structure is that it provides coordination and a focal point for whatever the community does. If there are negotiations with decision makers, for instance, the organization can coordinate representatives and shared priorities rather than having several groups negotiate separately without communication. This can strengthen the community's influence while still allowing members to acknowledge differences in perspective.

Planning for social action

Sometimes, social action arises from circumstance. The Czech opposition had for decades been hoping and planning for the spontaneous demonstrations of the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989 that led to the downfall of the Communist government. Leaders were available, and there were plans for a transition to non-Communist government,but there had been no planning for the huge demonstrations. They were a public reaction to the brutal repression of a student demonstration and to the demise of the Communist stranglehold in much of the Eastern Bloc.

On the other hand, when Wade Rathke arrived in Little Rock to start what became ACORN, he had no illusions about a spontaneous movement arising. He spent time recruiting organizations and individuals, identifying the important issues, forging alliances among groups that had previously been mutually hostile – particularly across racial lines – and planning with the community the ways in which they would approach the goals they had identified as most important and most reachable.

Whether it takes place over a long or a short period, planning is an important part of a social action campaign. Once you’ve laid the groundwork, and the community has organized, it’s time to strategize.

• Develop a strategic plan for social action. A social action campaign is just that. It’s likely that the community’s ultimate goals are long-term, and focus on permanent changes that will lead to social and economic justice. Goals that significant can’t be achieved quickly, or with only limited action. You’ll need a long-term strategy, as well as a strategy and action plan for reaching each of the interim goals that lead to the final outcome.
   
  We recommend the VMOSA process – develop a shared Vision; establish the Mission of your organization or initiative, based on the community vision; choose Objectives that reflect your vision and mission; formulate a Strategy for reaching those objectives; and devise Actions that will implement your strategy. Each element of this process should be carried out with the participation of – and, ideally, under the leadership of – the community, so that all of the plan is theirs. Organizers can play an important role as consultants and facilitators here, using their experience and expertise to help community members envision both short- and long-term goals, as well as what kinds of strategies and actions they might employ to reach those goals.

Some community organizers and community-building organizations concentrate much of their work on training organizers and leaders from within communities. The Highlander Research and Education Center trained many leaders and participants in the Civil Rights Movement and continues to support movement education and organizing. The Direct Action and Research Training Center (DART) and the Midwest Academy continue to provide organizing training, while the Industrial Areas Foundation develops leaders through its network of local organizations. PICO National Network is now known as Faith in Action. ACORN International and affiliated organizations also continue to use and teach member-led organizing approaches.
 

• Decide what kinds of actions will work best in your community, and what kinds of actions the community is and is not willing to take part in. There is a broad range of possible actions that a community can take. At one end are those actions that simply announce that the community exists as a unified force – letter-writing, calls or visits to officials relating to a legislative issue, etc. These actions require coordination and timing, but don’t ask anyone to subject themselves to any risk or public exposure. At the other end are acts of civil disobedience that may subject people to arrest and/or place them in physical danger.
   
  ​As a community, it’s important to know what you’re willing to do at any given time. This will depend on:
  • What is likely to be effective. Property damage or other destructive tactics can create legal and safety risks, shift attention away from the issue, and divide supporters, so groups should think carefully about whether any proposed tactic actually advances their goals.
  • What community members see as ethical or moral.The whole concept of nonviolent resistance, used by Gandhi and emulated by Martin Luther King and his colleagues in the American Civil Rights Movement, is based on the premise that violence against others is simply wrong, and would rob their movement of any moral force if they used it.
  • What community members are willing and prepared to do. This is related to the bullets both above and below, but also has to do with local history, social norms, previous experiences with authority, and personal circumstances. Some people may be uncomfortable with confrontation or public visibility, and others may face greater risks from participating. Strategies should account for those realities rather than assuming everyone can or should take the same role.
  • What kinds of risks people are willing to take. This may change as time goes on (see directly below), and different participants may face very different consequences from the same action. Some may be willing to be publicly identified or risk arrest; others may not. People should not be pressured into risks they have not freely chosen. A community that has experienced retaliation or severe consequences from protest in the past may have especially good reasons for caution, and the effort should respect those experiences.
  • What has already been tried. A community unwilling to engage in civil disobedience at the beginning of a campaign may feel differently after its milder efforts have been ignored. A community that’s staged a successful social action effort and reached its immediate goal may be willing to up the ante the next time. Circumstances and people change, which is why it’s important to revisit this question from time to time.
• Prepare contingency plans for what you will do if your first approach does not work. Sometimes a social action effort works on the first try. Sometimes it takes several attempts, a change in tactics, stronger public pressure, or another adjustment to bring progress. Sometimes the effort doesn’t work well, or at all: that’s when you need to have a Plan B.
   
  Your contingency plans can encompass many possibilities. One is to pause a particular issue and shift effort to a more achievable goal in order to build experience and morale. Another is to change tactics – approaching the issue from another angle or directing attention toward a different decision maker. You might also make clear that stronger public action is being considered while continuing to offer opportunities for negotiation. If escalation is chosen, it should be deliberate, consistent with the group's values, and based on a clear understanding of the likely benefits, risks, and consequences.

Escalation is not automatically the best outcome. If you can accomplish your goals by changing tactics, negotiating, or using another strategy, that may preserve relationships and reduce risk. You should have contingency plans that cover several possibilities so that you have choices when things don’t go as hoped. If stronger action may become necessary, decide in advance what forms the group considers appropriate and what limits it will observe.

The community should be clear about what level of action it is willing to take. Would some participants consider civil disobedience, while others prefer supporting roles? What are the probable and possible consequences of your plans for individuals, families, organizations, and the larger effort? Do participants understand their options and risks? Do you have the resources and commitment needed to sustain a difficult process – a lawsuit, for example – over time?

Whatever your answers to these questions, it’s necessary to plan for as many possibilities as you can. Never assume that just because you’re engaged in an action, it will accomplish your goals. You have to know what your next step is if it doesn’t.

Carrying out a social action strategy

Social action doesn’t always mean marching on City Hall in confrontation. It can include demonstrations when those are appropriate, but it can also mean testifying at a legislative hearing, going door to door to talk to voters about an upcoming election, filing a lawsuit, meeting with a regulatory agency to press for enforcement of existing rules, or visiting an elected representative with a group of community members.

The key difference between social action and individual democratic participation is the collective power created when many people coordinate around a shared concern. Calling an elected official as an individual to object to a government policy is democratic participation. Organizing thousands of people to call, write, meet with officials, demonstrate, or take other coordinated action around that same concern is social action.

Examples of social action abound. News reports regularly include campaigns in which organized communities use public pressure, advocacy, legal strategies, or direct action to influence decisions. The following historical examples show several forms of action ACORN was using in 2005:

• Mobilized voters – through door-to-door canvassing, voter registration, and participation in rallies – around a number of California ballot initiatives.
• Brought hundreds of members to a National Paint and Coatings Association board meeting in Cleveland to press the industry organization to discuss the paint industry's responsibility for lead exposure and its obligations to people harmed by lead paint.
• Co-sponsored a rally in New York City attended by more than 1,000 home childcare workers to highlight low wages and lack of support.
• Held actions around the country to oppose proposed federal budget cuts to programs serving people with low incomes.
• Taken part in actions and court proceedings related to the permit renewal of a smelter in El Paso, Texas, raising concerns about heavy-metal emissions and community health.

Eventually – usually sooner rather than later – you must go from planning to execution. Even in the simplest and least risky of actions, however – sending letters to legislators, for instance – people often need training or other kinds of help. The more complicated and potentially risky the action, the more support those engaged in it are likely to need.

Most of the steps below refer to carrying out an individual action. Remember, however, that carrying out a social action strategy is not the same as engaging in an individual action: it is often a long-term commitment to action of various kinds, usually with the goal of changing the distribution of power toward greater equity.

• Choose the time, place, target(s), and nature of your action based on its purpose, and on how it fits into your overall strategy. If you want to convince legislators to listen to you, or to act in a certain way, it makes no sense to demonstrate at the State House when they’re not in session, or at a place where they’re not likely to be aware of what you’re doing. If you want a bill passed, your action should aim at legislators; if you want a corporation to change its policies, your action should target the offices, or the officers, of that corporation. Think carefully about what you want to accomplish, and who actually has the power to make it happen.
   
  By the same token, consider what kind of action will be most effective for the purpose at hand and for your long-term strategy. In general, it makes sense to begin with the least escalatory action that has a reasonable chance of working, while preserving stronger options if they become necessary. If you can accomplish your goal without unnecessary confrontation, you may preserve relationships and leave room for negotiation. If you begin with your most disruptive tactic, you may have fewer options later and may find that repeated high-intensity actions lose their ability to attract attention.
   
• Provide the training and other support necessary to carry out a successful action before you engage in it. There are a number of different kinds of support that you may be able to provide:
  • Training. If people are writing letters or making phone calls, especially if they’re doing it for the first time, they may need a sample letter, talking points, or a script to use as a model. Participants should be briefed as fully as possible on the nature and extent of the action, their roles, where they’re expected to be, and when. If people are testifying before a legislative committee or a court, they should have a chance to practice what they’re going to say and learn what to expect. If civil disobedience is being considered, participants should receive appropriate nonviolence and safety preparation and understand possible legal consequences. They should also understand that participation is voluntary and that there are different roles – engaging in civil disobedience, supporting those who do, observing, providing logistics, or choosing not to participate in that part of the action. The more participants know beforehand, the better able they are to make informed choices and carry out their roles effectively.
  • Logistics. If you’re planning a march or a picket line, participants may need signs and clear information about where to gather. People may need transportation to a public meeting or polling place. Participants may need maps, accessibility information, water, charging options, or other practical support. For a media event or rally, you may need photographs, sound equipment, printed materials, computers, or a projector or display. Anticipating what organizers and participants need is an important part of organizing an action.

Don’t forget basic necessities. If a group is meeting with officials at City Hall or the State House, what will they do for lunch? Particularly if it’s a warm day, you may have to provide drinking water. Restroom facilities – portable or otherwise – might be needed. An adequate number of trash cans available during a rally will make clean-up after it much easier. The more of these kinds of things you can anticipate, the smoother your action will go.

• Coordination and support. People function better when roles and points of contact are clear. Having designated people provide directions, instructions, information, accessibility support, and other assistance can help an action run more smoothly and help participants know where to turn when questions or problems arise.

This kind of coordination and support is especially important when there is a risk of conflict, violence, harassment, or other safety problems. If the action is intended to be nonviolent, organizers should communicate that expectation clearly and designate trained marshals or safety coordinators who can help de-escalate problems and direct participants if conditions change.

• Plan the action in detail, then follow your plan. Just as with the overall strategy, the planning of an action should be participatory, involving people affected by the issue and representatives of member and affiliated organizations. The more meaningful a role participants have in shaping the strategy and individual actions, the more likely they are to remain engaged over the long term.
   
  The planning of an event should consider as many realistic possibilities as you and others involved can identify. It’s much easier to prevent or prepare for common problems than to respond to them for the first time in the middle of an action.

So what happens when you’ve planned carefully, and the absolutely unexpected happens: the legislative hearing you’d lined up testimony for is canceled; your main speaker is injured in a traffic accident on the way to the rally; the leader of your opposition has a heart attack on the morning of the day you’d planned to confront him?

One answer is, of course, that you should have foreseen the possibility of all of these events, and planned accordingly… and perhaps you did. But it’s simply not realistic to assume that anyone, no matter how clever, can think of everything that could happen. The best you can do is to make general contingency plans for when things go wrong, and to have a backup for everything. A speaker who’s ready to go on if she’s needed, an alternate route, an indoor space in case of bad weather – these and other contingency plans can save your bacon when the unexpected happens. Just as with the data on your computer, back up everything. You won’t be sorry.

• Organize for action. This means activating your communication network, going door to door, calling meetings, and doing whatever else it takes to get the right people to the right place at the right time. Whether you want 20 people to write letters to the Editor, or 2,000 people in front of City Hall at 2:00 on Monday, they need to be contacted and coordinated. Here’s why you have an organization and connections with community organizations and institutions and key individuals.
• Carry out the action. All the planning and philosophizing in the world won’t get you anything unless you translate them to action. Now’s the opportunity – do it!
• Follow up and evaluate. You’re not done when the action itself ends. You still have a number of things to do:

Take care of the logistics: Make sure people who need them have rides home, deliver that petition to the appropriate office, tally up the number of phone calls made, etc.
 
If you’ve staged a large rally or demonstration, someone has to pick up after the crowd, so that your message isn’t lost in complaining over the mess that your action left. There has to be an orderly and reasonable way for a crowd to disperse and get home when the action is over.
 
If you have follow-up activities planned (a State House rally can turn into visits to legislators, for instance), see to it that they take place, and that everyone knows what they’re supposed to do and where they’re supposed to go. At the end of that activity, you still have to get people home in an organized fashion, pickup the trash, etc.

If the action is explicitly nonviolent, marshals or coordinators should remain available through dispersal so that participants have clear information about how to leave safely and what to do if problems arise. Especially if counter-protesters or opponents are present, organizers should do what they reasonably can to reduce unnecessary confrontation and help people leave the area safely.

When everything’s actually all over – the next day or the  next week – the planners should meet to evaluate how things went. Did everything go according to plan? Did the people with responsibilities do a good job? Who was especially effective (or ineffective)? What was most effective? Least effective? What was media coverage like? How would you stage such an action in the future? Overall, did this type of action seem to work toward the purpose you set for it? If not, what might have worked better? Use your evaluation to adjust your next action – or your overall strategy, if necessary – to make it more effective.

As you know if you’ve used the Community Tool Box before, we consider evaluation to be an integral and extremely important part of any health or community development activity. If you evaluate honestly, you’ll have valuable information about what you’re doing, information that will allow you to change and improve your work. Use that opportunity consistently to strengthen future actions and your overall campaign.
 

• Finally, plan your next move based on how what you just did fits into your overall strategy. You’re in this for the long haul; each action should connect to your larger goals and help you decide what comes next. Social action strategies are seldom complete in themselves. They can establish gains that add up to significant change over time, while also revealing what remains to be done. The Civil Rights Movement transformed U.S. law, institutions, and daily life in profound ways, while struggles over racial equity and equal participation continue. Successful organizers learn from each stage, sustain relationships and organizations, and keep working as long as important goals remain unmet.

In Summary

Community organizing, as practiced by Saul Alinsky, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, and many others, demonstrates the collective power that people can build by organizing around shared concerns. This is social action, and it can take forms ranging from coordinated letters and public testimony to demonstrations, boycotts, strikes, and civil disobedience.

Social action often means challenging rules, policies, practices, or decisions established by people and institutions with greater formal power, while exercising rights to organize, advocate, protest, and participate in public life. It can help communities that have experienced harm, neglect, exclusion, or unfair treatment build collective influence and make their own priorities harder to ignore. By drawing attention to inequity and injustice, and by using coordinated action to confront, negotiate with, or cooperate with policymakers and other institutions, a social action strategy can contribute to significant social change.

What is social action?

___Social action is the practice of taking action – usually as part of an organized group or community – to create positive change, generally in the direction of greater equity and economic and social justice.

___The Iron Rule of community organizing is never to do for people what they can do for themselves.

___The Iron Rule of community organizing is never to do for people what they can do for themselves.

Examples of social action include:

___Organized communication (letters, phone calls, e-mail) with policy makers and others in authority.

___Encouraging media stories and reporting.

___Putting together or backing a slate of candidates for public office.

___Attending, as a group, a public meeting at which an issue of interest to your community is being discussed.

___Picketing or organizing a strike.

___A boycott.

___A sit-in.

___Street theater.

___Demonstrations, rallies and marches.

Why engage in social action?

___It empowers and energizes populations that have traditionally been powerless, or haven’t understood their potential for exercising power.

___It unifies communities.

___It demonstrates to the world that the community is a force to be reckoned with.

___It may be the only thing that will move a stubborn opponent.

___It motivates people to take other kinds of positive action.

___It can be the beginning of a process that ends in a more unified larger community.

___It can lead to long-term positive social change.

When should you engage in social action?

___When negotiation and reason will get you nowhere.

___When time is short.

___When you want to make a dramatic statement that will focus public attention.

___When you want to energize and empower the community, and develop community leadership.

___When you want to catch the attention of the public – and the media – and galvanize public opinion in your favor about an issue or about your organization or community.

Who should be involved in social action?

___Planning and implementing a social action strategy should be inclusive and participatory.

___Involve previously existing community groups.

___Involve individuals affected by the issue(s) at hand.

How do you engage in social action?

___Get to know the community.

___Identify the issues that are likely to lead the community to social action.

___Identify and contact key individuals and community groups.

___Recruit community members to the effort.

___Build a communication system.

___Encourage leadership from the community from the beginning.

___Create a structure to help the community accomplish its goals.

___Develop a strategic plan for social action.

___Decide what kinds of actions will work best in your community, and what kinds of actions the community is and is not willing to take part in.

___Develop contingency plans based on the level to which you’re willing to escalate.

___Choose the time, place, target(s), and nature of your action based on its purpose, and on how it fits into your overall strategy.

___Provide training and other support necessary to carry out a successful action before you engage in it.

___Plan the action in detail, then follow your plan.

___Organize for action.

___Carry out the action.

___Follow up and evaluate.

___Finally, plan your next move based on how what you just did fits into your overall strategy. 

A PowerPoint presentation summarizing the major points in the section.

Often, community problems or issues are too large and complex for any one agency or organization to tackle. In these circumstances, putting together a coalition of groups and individuals can be an effective strategy for changing the programs, policies, practices, and conditions - in schools, business, government, and other relevant sectors - that are needed to solve the problem or achieve the goal. This section discusses what a community coalition or partnership is, why and when it can be a good strategy, who should be included, and how to implement it.

What is a coalition?

In simplest terms, a coalition is a group of individuals and/or organizations with a common interest who agree to work together toward a common goal. That goal could be as narrow as obtaining funding for a specific intervention, or as broad as trying to improve permanently the overall quality of life for people in the community. By the same token, the individuals and organizations involved might be drawn from a narrow area of interest, or might include representatives of nearly every segment of the community, depending upon the breadth of the issue.

Coalitions may be loose associations in which members work for a short time to achieve a specific goal, and then disband. They may also become organizations in themselves, with governing bodies, particular community responsibilities, funding, and permanence. They may draw from a community, a region, a state, or even the nation as a whole. Regardless of their size and structure, they exist to create and/or support efforts to reach a particular set of goals.

Coalition goals are as varied as coalitions themselves, but often contain elements of one or more of the following:

• Influencing or developing public policy, usually around a specific issue.
• Supporting changes in behavior and the conditions that influence behavior (reducing smoking or harmful substance use, for instance).
• Building a healthy community. This term generally refers both to the community's physical health (which may include not only medical and preventive or wellness services, but the environment, community planning, housing, food security, substance use, and other factors) and its social and psychological health (encompassing diversity, education, culture and the arts, violence prevention, youth development, employment, economic development, mental health and other human services, etc.).

Why start a coalition (and why might it be difficult)?

There are a number of reasons why developing a coalition might be a good idea. In general terms, it can concentrate the community's focus on a particular problem, create alliances among people and organizations that might not normally work together, and help coordinate the community's approach to issues.

Some more specific reasons for forming a coalition might include:

• To address an urgent situation. The youth violence example that introduces this section is a good illustration of this reason.
• To strengthen the ability of community members - or the community as a whole - to shape its future. This may mean addressing the place of youth in the community, for instance, or looking at economic development in light of globalization and community resources.
• To actually obtain or provide services. It may take a coalition - either initially or over the long term - to design, obtain funding for, and/or run a needed intervention in the community.
• To bring about more effective and efficient delivery of programs and reduce unnecessary duplication of effort. Gathering all the players involved in a particular issue can result in a more cohesive and comprehensive intervention. Rather than unnecessarily duplicating their efforts, organizations can coordinate responsibilities in ways that expand access to programs and allow for a greater variety of services.

• To pool resources. A number of organizations and individuals together may have the resources to accomplish a task that none of them could have done singly. In general, people and organizations join coalitions to do just that - accomplish together what they cannot alone.
• To increase communication among groups and challenge stereotypes and assumptions. Bringing together groups and individuals from many sectors of the community can create relationships where there was little contact before. Working together toward common goals can help people understand one another better, build trust, and reduce barriers.
• To renew the energy of people and organizations that have been trying to do too much alone. A coalition can help sustain efforts around an issue. For people who've worked too long in isolation, the addition of other people, ideas, and resources can be a tremendous source of new energy and hope.
• To plan and launch community-wide initiatives on a variety of issues. In addition to addressing immediately pressing issues or promoting or providing services, coalitions can serve to unify efforts around long-term campaigns in such areas as smoking cessation, community economic development, or environmental preservation.
• To build collective influence and advocate for services or other benefits for the community. A coordinated community coalition can advocate for the area more effectively than a number of disconnected groups and individuals working alone. A broad coalition can bring together relationships, knowledge, constituencies, and public support from many sectors of the community.
• To create long-term, lasting social change. Meaningful change usually takes place over time through people building trust, sharing ideas, addressing differences, and working on the underlying conditions connected to community needs. A coalition, with its structure of cooperation among diverse groups and individuals and its problem-solving focus, can support and sometimes accelerate this process.

Barriers to starting a coalition

There are often barriers to starting a coalition, and it's important to be aware of and anticipate them, because they may influence the process the coalition will have to follow in order to begin successfully. Among the most likely:

• Turf issues. Organizations may be concerned about sharing responsibilities, relationships with participants, recognition, information, or funding. Part of the work of starting a coalition may be showing how collaboration can benefit participating organizations while better addressing their common goals.
• Past harm/missteps. Organizations, individuals, or the community as a whole may have had experiences in the past that have convinced them that working with certain others - or working together at all - is simply not possible. A new coalition may have to acknowledge and address this history before it can effectively begin the work it needs to do.
• Domination by professionals, officials, or other participants with greater institutional influence. Agency staff with advanced degrees, local politicians, business leaders, and others may unintentionally dominate discussion or decision-making because they are more accustomed to formal meetings or hold greater organizational authority. A coalition should make meaningful participation possible for the people most affected by the issue and ensure that professional or institutional expertise does not override lived experience and community knowledge.

• Poor links to the community. A first step may have to be developing relationships among agencies, organizations, and the broader community where strong connections do not already exist.
• Minimal organizational capacity. It might be necessary to find a coordinator, or for one or more individuals or organizations to share responsibility for organizing the new group, if it is to develop beyond - or even as far as - a first meeting.
• Funding. The difficulty of finding funding is an obvious obstacle. Less obvious are the dangers of funding that pushes the coalition in a direction that does not fit community priorities or requires it to act too quickly to address the issue effectively. New coalitions should remain alert to funding possibilities while also considering the conditions, expectations, and potential effects of the funding they accept.
• Failure to develop and share leadership within the coalition. Coalitions demand a very special kind of collaborative leadership. If that leadership isn't available and can't be developed from within the coalition, its effectiveness and sustainability may be at risk. It may be useful to bring in an outside facilitator and/or provide training in collaborative leadership.
• The perceived - or actual - costs of working together outweigh the benefits for many coalition members. The task here may be to find ways to increase benefits and reduce unnecessary burdens for the individuals and organizations involved if the coalition is to survive.

If you understand the potential barriers to forming a coalition in your community, you can plan for them and increase your chances of success.

When should you develop a coalition?

A coalition needs to have a purpose if it is to be successful. As discussed above, the purpose may be broad or narrow, but it's unlikely that a diverse group will come together unless there's a reason to do so. At particular times, circumstances help to move the formation of coalitions.

When dramatic or disturbing events occur in a community.  In a town of 6,000 in western Massachusetts, four women were murdered by their domestic partners in a space of less than a year. These murders spurred the formation of a coalition to address not only domestic violence, but the broader issue of violence against women, as well as related community concerns such as drug dealing and the responsiveness of the courts.

When new information becomes available. The latest unemployment figures may show that the community's unemployment rate is rising rapidly, motivating the formation of a coalition to deal with economic development. A new study may alert a community to the fact that Black men - a significant part of its population - are experiencing a disproportionately high burden of heart disease, and community members and health providers may respond by forming a coalition to improve prevention, access to care, screening, treatment, and the social and environmental conditions that influence health.

When circumstances or the rules change. After the state passed welfare reform legislation, an already economically depressed rural county found itself faced with the prospect of helping a large number of people receiving public assistance transition into employment within a limited period. As a result, the local public assistance office, the local branch of the state employment agency, and several other agencies that worked with people receiving public assistance and their families formed a coalition to try to respond to the situation.

When new funding becomes available. A new Request For Proposals (RFP) from a state agency or other source of funding may require a coalition to obtain funding for a particular service, or a coalition may form in order to create a comprehensive proposal that coordinates resources and services across the community.

When there's an outside threat to the community. Communities have formed coalitions, for instance, to influence decisions about hospital ownership or closure; to oppose industrial developments they believe could harm community health or the environment; and to preserve open space from development.

When a group wishes to create broad, significant community change. Sometimes a problem or issue is so complex and deeply rooted that meaningful improvement requires changes in policies, systems, relationships, resources, and community conditions. In that situation - again, the Pryorville youth violence problem is an example - a broad coalition may be necessary to involve the people and sectors affected by the issue and address it on several levels.

When you have not only a good reason for starting a coalition, but also the possibility that one can be started successfully in the community. This is an extremely important issue, one that is dependent upon a number of factors:

• Is the issue or problem clear enough that people can find sufficient common ground to work together? Participants do not necessarily have to agree on every aspect of the issue or its solution, but they need enough shared understanding to begin working toward common goals.
• Is there at least some level of trust among the individuals and organizations who'd make up the coalition? Community history, or the history of particular organizations, may present what seem to be insurmountable barriers to the formation of a coalition. Community divisions along racial, ethnic, class, religious, or political lines; old feuds; turf battles among agencies; or past failed coalition efforts may mean that a great deal of groundwork has to be done before the community is willing to consider the possibility of a coalition. It may take a long time to build up trust to that point.

• Is a coalition in fact the best response to the issue? Assuming that neither issue definition nor mistrust is a problem, there is still the possibility that most people will not see a coalition as the most effective way to handle the situation, and they may be right. Some questions should be considered before you try to start a coalition:
  • Can the issue be better addressed if the people and organizations concerned are working together, and will a coalition help accomplish that purpose?
  • Will a coalition increase the likelihood that the important factors affecting the issue are identified and addressed?
  • Will a coalition increase the coherence, strength, and effectiveness of the community's response to the issue?
  • If the community already has a number of coalitions, is yet another the best response to this issue, or could the work be incorporated into an existing structure?

A coalition is most likely to form and endure when there is both a meaningful reason to work together and enough willingness, trust, and capacity to begin.

Who should be part of a coalition?

In general, coalitions benefit from broad and relevant participation, but simply having more members is not always better. The important question is whether the coalition includes the people, organizations, perspectives, and decision makers needed to understand the issue and act effectively.

Stakeholders.

These are the people who have a stake in the coalition's work. They can include:

• Those most affected by the issue. These may include current or potential participants in programs, people who lack access to such basic needs as health care or adequate housing, people with particular health conditions, or - in the case, for instance, of many environmental and public health issues - the community as a whole. People whose lives are directly affected should have meaningful opportunities to participate in decisions about the issue.
• Formal and informal helpers, those charged with carrying out community functions related to the issue, and others affected by what the coalition might do. The staffs of health and human service providers or other organizations and community agencies, police, school personnel, the probation and court system, local employers, landowners - some or all of these and/or many others may be directly or indirectly involved in the results of coalition initiatives.

Community opinion leaders.

It can be extremely useful to include people who are trusted or influential within different parts of the community. Clergy, business or civic leaders, neighborhood leaders, or people who are simply highly credible in the community may fall into this group.

How do you start a community coalition?

So...you've decided a coalition is indeed the way to go in your community. How do you actually go about starting one?

Put together a core group.

You're probably already not alone in your concerns about the issue at hand, and you may already have a core group - a few individuals or organizations - ready to work at forming a coalition. If not, your first step is to find and make contact with several individuals and organizations closely connected to the issue.

Some reasons why a core group, rather than an individual, should lead the effort:

• A core group will have more contacts and more knowledge of the community than a single individual.
• It can give the idea of a coalition more credibility among potential members.
• It can make finding and reaching potential members a much faster process.
• A core group allows people to share the work of organizing the coalition.
• It demonstrates that interest in the effort extends beyond a single individual or organization.

There are a few ways to approach assembling a core group:

• Start with people you know. If you're a longtime activist on this issue, or if you've been living or working in your community for a while, you may already have contacts among others concerned with the same things you are. Use those relationships either to invite people into the core group or to identify others who might participate.
• Contact people in agencies and institutions most affected by the issue. Pryorville Youth Services, in its drive to start a coalition on youth violence, went to both the Chief of Police and the Superintendent of Schools for support. As a result, a Community Affairs officer and an Assistant Superintendent both became part of the core group that set out to put the coalition together.
• Talk to influential and well-connected people throughout the community. These may be business or civic leaders, community members with strong relationships and credibility, or people whose work connects them with many sectors of the community.

Identify the most important potential coalition members.

Especially if your coalition has a narrow and time-limited purpose, there are probably people or organizations whose participation will be particularly important. It's useful to identify them and make a deliberate effort to involve them. That may mean arranging a personal meeting, explaining why their perspective matters, and asking what would make meaningful participation possible for them.

Most of these individuals and organizations are referred to in "Who should be part of a coalition?" above, but each community is different. In yours, there may be a specific community member, organization, public official, or institution whose participation is particularly important because of its knowledge, relationships, authority, or connection to the issue. The core group may already know these people or know someone who can make an introduction.

As mentioned earlier, none of this is to say that you shouldn't recruit many other people and organizations to your coalition as well. It simply means that you may need to make a special effort to involve some participants whose perspectives, authority, or relationships are particularly important to the coalition's work.

Recruit members to the coalition.

Now that your core group is in place, and you've identified potential members who are especially important to the coalition's success, you can start recruiting members. Although it's important to start with the individuals and groups mentioned above, you'll probably want participation to be as broad and relevant as the issue requires.

Use the networking capacity of your core group to the fullest. The core group can brainstorm a list of possible members, in addition to those already identified as especially important. Then each member can identify people on the list whom they know personally or organizations where they have a contact. Remaining contacts can be divided among members of the core group.

There are, obviously, a number of ways to contact people and organizations, including:

• Face-to-face meetings
• Phone or video calls
• E-mail
• Personal letters
• Mass mailings or e-mail lists
• Public Service Announcements, community media, or social media
• Flyers and posters

Direct personal contact is often especially effective for people whose participation is important or where trust needs to be built. Other communication methods can help reach larger numbers of people more efficiently. The best approach depends on the community, the relationship, accessibility needs, and the amount of time available.

Be sure to ask those you talk to for suggestions about other potential members, and, when appropriate, ask them to make an introduction. That can spread out the work and may give the invitation more credibility because it comes through an existing relationship. If you are successful, the network of possible members can expand far beyond your original list.

Plan and hold a first meeting.

The first meeting of a coalition is important. If it's an engaging and productive gathering that helps people see the value of participating, you're off to a good start. If participants leave confused about the purpose of the coalition or feel that their time was wasted, many may not return. It's up to the core group - in what may be the last official task it undertakes - to plan a meeting that gets the coalition started well.

There are really two concerns here: the logistics of the meeting (where, when, accessibility, how long, etc.) and the content of it.

There are a number of possibilities for the content of the first meeting. The agenda should depend on your particular issue and purposes, and on the needs of your community, but you'll probably want to include some of the following:

• Introductions all around. Everyone present should have an opportunity to briefly introduce themselves, the organization, if any, they're connected with, and the nature of their interest in the issue.
• Start defining the issue or problem around which the coalition has come together. This might mean the group developing an initial statement, or it might entail a discussion followed by a smaller group drafting a possible definition for review at the next meeting.
• Discuss the structure of the coalition. What kind of group will it be, how will decisions be made, how will leadership and coordination work, and what kinds of activities will it actually undertake? Is hiring staff a reasonable goal, either currently or eventually?
• At least start the process of creating a common vision and agreeing on shared values about the direction of the coalition. This is the first step toward developing the vision and mission statements that will define the coalition and guide its work.
• Discuss a procedure for forming an action plan. Again, this may result in an actual, or at least a preliminary, plan, or it may lead either to the appointment of a smaller group to draft a plan, or to the establishment of a procedure by which the larger group will generate a plan over a set period of time.
• Review the things to be done before the next meeting, and who has agreed to do them. It's useful for people to leave the first meeting knowing what progress was made and what comes next. If there are tasks being worked on and specific results expected at the next meeting - even if those results are simply statements or preliminary plans to review - members can see that the coalition is moving forward.
• Schedule at least the next meeting. It may be possible to develop a regular meeting schedule at this first meeting, or it may make more sense to schedule only the next meeting and wait until membership stabilizes before creating a long-term schedule.

Follow up on the first meeting.

You've held a successful first meeting - terrific! The job of building a coalition has only begun, however. First, you have to follow up to make sure that there will be a well-attended second meeting at which work can continue.

• Distribute the minutes or a meeting summary and reminders about the next meeting to those who attended, and send information to potential new members as well. Continue widening your network. Reach people you missed the first time and those whose names were suggested by participants.
• Follow up with the groups or individuals who are working on tasks identified at the first meeting. Offer help, connect them with others who have relevant skills or knowledge, and make sure barriers to completing the work are addressed.
• If there are committees or task forces forming, continue recruiting appropriate members for them. Much of the coalition's detailed work may happen in these smaller groups, so it is important that they include the knowledge, experience, and perspectives needed for the task.
• Keep looking for new coalition members and perspectives that may be missing.
• Keep track of the fundamental building blocks of the coalition that aren't in place yet. If the group hasn't yet decided on a structure or coordinating body, make sure the question remains active. If there's no movement on an action plan, determine what is needed to get the process going.

Next steps.

There are a number of specific things - some of which you've already started in that first meeting - that need to be done to make sure that the coalition keeps moving forward.

• Gather information. In order to plan for action, you need good information about the problem or issue and about the community. Organizations most involved with the issue may already have statistics, evaluations, community knowledge, or other information. The U.S. Census and American Community Survey can provide demographic, social, economic, and housing information, while local colleges, universities, public agencies, and community organizations may provide additional data and context. Combine quantitative information with the experiences and perspectives of people directly affected by the issue.
• Finish creating vision and mission statements. These can be developed in a small group after everyone has had input in a larger meeting, or generated through a participatory process involving the larger membership. It's important that there be broad understanding of and agreement with the intent of these statements because they will help define the coalition and guide its work over time.
• Complete an action plan. The coalition's action plan is intertwined with both its structure and its vision and mission. In practice, coalitions often start with a sense of what they need to do, and their structures, visions, and missions continue to develop as the group works together.
• Finish the work of designing a structure for the coalition. Again, this should be a shared task, with members having meaningful opportunities to contribute ideas. There is a broad range of possibilities here - from relatively informal coordination to a more formal governing structure - and the group should come up with a form that fits its purpose, size, values, and responsibilities. Once a structure has been agreed upon, there may still be a need for bylaws or other formal agreements.

• Elect officers, or a coordinating or steering committee. Once there's agreement about the structure of the coalition, members can decide whether they want some sort of governing or coordinating body and choose it through the agreed-upon process.
• Examine the need for paid or dedicated staff. Depending on the scope of its work plan, a coalition may feel that it needs staff - perhaps a coordinator - to be effective. If it has the resources, a community coalition may be able to hire a full- or part-time coordinator. Or it may identify the need and then seek resources. Member organizations, grants, local institutions, or other community partners may sometimes be able to support all or part of a staff position.
• Determine what other resources - financial, material, informational, relational, etc. - you need, develop a plan for getting them, and decide who's going to be responsible for carrying it out. If you already have funding for paid staff, resource development may be one of their responsibilities, or it may belong to a coalition committee or other designated members. Part of creating a strategic plan that encompasses your vision, mission, and action plan is identifying the resources you'll need to reach your goals and planning for how to obtain them.
• Start the hard work of maintaining the coalition over time. Once your coalition is a going concern, it still needs attention. After it's been around for a while and had some success, people may start to take it for granted, or longtime participants may become overextended or burn out. Careful maintenance, renewal of leadership, and continued recruitment are extremely important for the long term.

General guidelines for getting a coalition off the ground.

In addition to the specifics above, there are some more general elements to starting a coalition:

• Communicate, communicate, communicate. Make sure that lines of communication within the coalition and among the coalition, the media, and the community are open and accessible. Good communication helps people stay informed, understand decisions, coordinate their work, and know how to participate. Communication with the media and the broader community can also increase understanding and support for the coalition's work.
• Be as inclusive and participatory as you can. Work at making the coalition a group in which people from across the community can participate meaningfully, and continue inviting people after the first meeting. Try to involve members in generating vision and mission statements, planning, and major decisions. Pay particular attention to whether people most affected by the issue have real influence, rather than simply being present.
• Build and maintain relationships throughout the community. Try to involve, or at least keep informed, other groups whose work or constituencies connect with the issue. Let them know what you're doing, invite them to coalition meetings where appropriate, and create opportunities for them to participate. Strong relationships can expand the coalition's knowledge, reach, credibility, and connections to decision makers.
• At least at the beginning, set concrete and achievable goals that matter to the coalition's larger purpose. Visible progress can help members see that their work is worthwhile and build the experience, trust, and momentum needed to pursue longer-term goals.
• Be thoughtful and creative about meetings. Community activists and health and human service workers often spend a great deal of time in meetings. Meetings should therefore have a clear purpose and make good use of participants' time. Possibilities include rotating responsibility for meetings among coalition members; holding fewer full-coalition meetings and doing more detailed work in committees or task forces; incorporating learning opportunities; or using different formats to make participation more accessible and engaging.
• Be realistic, and keep your promises. If you're not sure you can do something, don't promise it. If you make a commitment, do your best to follow through and communicate early if circumstances change.
• Acknowledge diversity among your members, and among their ideas and beliefs. Your coalition may reflect the cultural, economic, racial, ethnic, religious, political, and other diversity of your community, and it will almost certainly represent a diversity of opinion. Not everyone will agree with everything the coalition does or wants to do, and minority perspectives may raise important concerns the majority has overlooked. Make space for disagreement and use diversity as a resource for better discussion and decision-making rather than treating it as an obstacle to unity.

• Recognize contributions and celebrate progress. In addition to progress itself, taking time to acknowledge people's work can strengthen relationships among members of a coalition. Whether through individual or group recognition, celebrations, reflection, or other events, acknowledging achievement can help sustain the coalition and remind people why the work matters.

In Summary

In situations where issues are too large and complex for a single organization to address, a coalition of groups and individuals working together may be the solution. A coalition can develop a coordinated response to an issue, improve service delivery, pool community resources, create and launch community-wide initiatives, build collective influence to shape policy, and work toward long-term social change.

Coalitions may form in response to:

• Significant or disturbing community events
• New information
• Changes in circumstances or regulations
• The availability of funding
• An outside threat to the community
• The need to create significant change in the community

Whatever the reason, coalitions are more likely to form and endure when there is a shared need or purpose, sufficient trust to begin working together, and meaningful opportunities for participation. They should include people affected by the work of the coalition and by the issue it addresses, along with relevant organizations, community leaders, policy makers, and other community members whose perspectives and resources can contribute to the effort.

To start a coalition, it's often useful to begin with a core group and work outward, bringing in the people and organizations necessary to understand the issue and act on it effectively. A productive first meeting at which participants begin building relationships, defining the issue, and establishing next steps can help launch the coalition successfully.

Even more important is following up before the second meeting to make sure that agreed-upon work is moving forward, participants remain connected, and additional members and perspectives continue to be added. Areas that must be addressed include:

• An agreed-upon definition of the issue or problem the coalition is addressing
• The creation of vision and mission statements
• The development of an action plan
• The design of a structure for the coalition
• The need for paid or dedicated staff
• Resources

Finally, you have to continue to pay attention to some general principles for forming and running a coalition:

• Communicate openly and accessibly with everyone
• Be inclusive and participatory
• Build relationships and networks throughout the community
• Set achievable goals that contribute to the coalition's larger purpose
• Hold purposeful and engaging meetings
• Be realistic about what you can do, and follow through on commitments
• Acknowledge and draw strength from the diversity of the group

A coalition can be a powerful force for positive change in a community. If you can build one that lasts, shares leadership, meaningfully includes the people affected by its work, and remains focused on the issues it was created to address, you've done a major piece of community building work.

What is a coalition?

___You know that a coalition is a group of individuals and/or organizations with a common interest who agree to work together toward a common goal

Why start a coalition?

___To address an urgent situation.

___To actually obtain or provide services.

___To bring about more effective and efficient delivery of programs and eliminate any unnecessary duplication of services.

___To pool resources.

___To increase communication among groups and break down stereotypes.

___To revitalize the sagging energies of members of groups who are trying to do too much alone.

___To plan and launch community-wide initiatives on a variety of issues.

___To develop and use political clout to gain services or other benefits for the community.

___To create long-term, permanent social change.

When should you start a coalition?

___You respond to dramatic or disturbing community events

___You react to new information

___You respond to changes in circumstances or regulations

___You take advantage of new funding

___You address an outside threat

___You try to create significant change in the community

___You form a coalition when trust and perception of a need make it possible

___You recognize the barriers to starting a coalition.

Who should be part of a coalition?

___You include stakeholders, both beneficiaries of the work of the coalition and those otherwise affected by it.

___You include opinion leaders.

___You include policy makers.

___You include members of the community at large

How do you start a community coalition?

___You form a core group.

___You identify necessary coalition members.

___You recruit coalition members, using appropriate means:

• Personal contact
• Phone
• E-mail
• Letter
• Advertising
• Posters and flyers.

___You plan and hold an inclusive and exciting first meeting, where something actually gets done and people leave with assignments and the next meeting scheduled.

___You follow up on the first meeting, checking on assignments, reminding people about the next meeting, and continuing to recruit new members.

You continue to pursue the important tasks started at the first meeting:

___Defining the issue and drafting vision and mission statements

___Developing an action plan

___Working out an acceptable coalition structure

___Deciding on the need for professional staff

___Obtaining resources.

You continue to pay attention to the general guidelines for coalition success:

___Free, open, and multi-directional communication

___Inclusiveness and participation

___Networking

___Setting reachable goals

___Holding creative meetings

___Being realistic about what the coalition can do

___Acknowledging and using diversity

___Rewarding accomplishment and celebrating success

Example 1: The North Quabbin Community Coalition

Background: The Need

The North Quabbin area of central Massachusetts comprises nine towns with a total population of under 25,000. While several are picture-perfect, white clapboard New England villages, three are industrial - mill towns from which the mills are in the process of disappearing. Athol, the largest, was also, in 1984 as now, the region's commercial hub, with the largest employers, the only local hospital, most of the shopping options, the YMCA, and the regional Chamber of Commerce.

By the 1980's, the area had been losing its traditional base of employment - machine tool and shoe factories - for several years. It was in a part of the state that was sparsely populated and regularly ignored in Boston, where policy was made and funds allocated. In addition, although the nine towns operated as a coherent region - most residents of the nine towns did their grocery shopping in Athol and Orange, for instance - they were divided between two counties and among as many as three different state representatives and two state senators.

In 1984, the North Quabbin area had one of the highest unemployment rates in the state. A strike had precipitated the closing of one of the largest employers in Athol, and the loss of over 300 jobs had proved devastating. After two medical students dispatched by the Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) reported that the region was on the verge of a serious increase in hunger and homelessness, Tom Wolff, a community psychologist, was hired by AHEC's director to try to start a coalition to address the North Quabbin's situation.

The core group

Tom came equipped with experience working with communities and a short list of people in the area who might be helpful. He eventually assembled a Steering Committee of community people that was small, but influential. It included the President of the Athol-Orange Area (now North Quabbin) Chamber of Commerce; the Director of Athol Memorial Hospital; the Executive Director of the Human Resource Center, the local mental health agency; and one of the region's state representatives.

"We decided to take the summer to plan, and to try to hold a meeting in the fall," Tom explains. "We got the Chamber of Commerce involved because it was an economic development issue, and also because the President, a banker, had been both a minister and a human service worker. The hospital was one of the area's largest employers, and the Human Resource Center was the biggest of the agencies. It was an obvious group to work with."

The mission

The Steering Committee developed a list of goals for the Coalition (later approved by the Coalition as a whole):

1. To develop a planning body for health and human services for the area.
2. To promote greater cooperation among all agencies delivering services to the nine towns.
3. To collaboratively solve problems regarding the major local health and human service issues.
4. To develop an advocacy capacity to lobby for appropriate services for the area.
5. To provide information to community providers and residents to increase accessibility and visibility of available services.
6. To monitor successful implementation of plans developed by the Coalition.

The Steering Committee also adopted a set of guidelines for reaching these goals.

1. All decision-making and problem solving should be collaborative, so that everyone would buy into Coalition initiatives.
2. The Coalition should follow the rules of group process, which included having a defined leader or facilitator; clear goals; capacity to focus on its own process; respect for all contributions; and encouragement of participation.
3. Addressing any issue should begin from the assumption that the community often already has some or all of the resources to solve the problem. Resources should be sought from within the community before anyone begins to look outside.
4. The membership should be open to anyone who wanted to join, and should include line staff as well as directors of health and human service agencies, and broad representation from the community.
5. The Coalition should take an "ecological " approach to individuals and problems, considering the whole context of an issue or an individual's life, and not limiting either through the narrow focus of a single agency's point of view.

Recruiting members

The Steering Committee put together a list of people and organizations that needed to be included in any North Quabbin coalition if it was to be successful. These included all the local health and human service agencies (a sore point was that some services were only available from agencies based in Greenfield, 25 miles away and not part of the region), all the state legislators representing the area, the clergy, employers (the Chamber connection was important here), local officials, and such area institutions as the YMCA.

Tom and the other Steering Committee members got on the phone and started contacting people. They received immediate and eager support from the legislators, among others, and were pleasantly surprised to find how much general enthusiasm there was for the idea. "We had planned to start with a small group," Tom remembers, "but there were more than 60 people who wanted to play. We couldn't turn them away."

The first meeting

The first meeting of the Coalition was held at the Knights of Columbus hall in Orange, and it was packed. All the legislators were there, representatives of all the health and human service organizations, members of the Chamber, clergy, local officials... almost everyone who had been invited.

Tom facilitated the meeting for several reasons: First, he was a neutral presence, with no connection to any of the agencies or other entities represented at the meeting, and therefore carried with him no negative history. Second, he had had experience working in communities and bringing groups together. Third, he was an expert facilitator, with the skills to make sure everyone was heard, to keep the meeting from being derailed by individual agendas or old conflicts, and to see that the group accomplished something substantive. And finally, AHEC had sent him into the area to bring the coalition together: it was part of his job.

Community history didn't bode well for collaboration. "The human service agencies never talked to each other, and didn't really interact with other parts of the community," recalls Tom. "Just getting everyone in the same room was an accomplishment. Then they started to talk about what they saw as the issues, and found they had all kinds of experience in common. It all really started at that first meeting."

The immediate agenda, set by the core group, was to define the issues the Coalition would address. Nearly everyone spoke, and all spoke of a community with a negative self-image, few employment opportunities, emerging homelessness, and an across-the-board lack of information. Agencies didn't know what others did or who they served, people who might use agency services often didn't know they existed, and the community had no idea what was available.

By the end of the meeting, it was clear that, at the very least, agencies needed to share information, and needed a way to get information out to the community. The group set a next meeting, agreeing to meet monthly, and to continue to recruit members. Tom announced the time and place of the next Steering Committee meeting, and made it clear that anyone interested was welcome to join.

"One of the most important things that came out of that first meeting was that people who had never talked to each other were talking. Even at the first meeting, connections were being made that hadn't been made before, and agencies that had never worked together were starting to see ways they could cooperate. There were mammoth turf issues and defensiveness, and those didn't go away all at once. But at least there was some conversation going on."

Defining issues and developing a way of working together

As the Coalition continued to meet, people started addressing the approved goals and the issues that arose from the first meeting. An Information and Referral Task Force was formed at the second meeting, and began to explore ways to set up a local Information & Referral service. A group constituted itself early on as the Planning Committee, and developed and distributed a survey, asking Coalition members where they wanted the community to be in ten years, and how they thought it could get there. The Steering Committee and legislators began working together on advocacy for more resources for the area, helped by some of Tom's and others' connections in the state bureaucracy.

Coalition meetings themselves took the form of information-sharing and problem-solving sessions. When problems were identified, task forces formed to address them, and there was an effort to involve everyone with any connection to the problem. Specific problems were analyzed so that they could be approached by all the concerned organizations and entities working together, and inter-agency cooperation became far more common. The mere existence of the Coalition had begun to solve one of the biggest problems originally identified by the medical students when they came to the area: a lack of coordination among agencies in delivering services and dealing with the area's larger issues.

The Steering Committee was also changing, with more members beginning to attend meetings and some of the original members dropping off. By the end of the year, only Tom and two of the other original members remained: the rest were Coalition members who, as had been hoped, had started attending and ended up joining the Committee.

Halfway through the year, a combination of the Coalition's advocacy efforts and the designation of the area as an economic target brought the Governor to Athol. Tom and other members of the Steering Committee were able to speak with him, and to gain some promises of increased resources for area human services. Unlike many of such promises, these were kept, and the Coalition had a solid accomplishment under its belt.

By the end of the first year, the Coalition could point to funding for an Information & Referral service, awarded, after some fairly nasty infighting among agencies, to a grassroots organization that had already been doing it on a small scale. More state money had been directed to the area, and local agencies were beginning not only to deliver more services, but to reach out to the community more. Agencies were collaborating on programs, and there was talk of case coordination for individuals involved with several different organizations.

At that point, Tom offered to leave and turn the Coalition facilitation and coordination over to the community. Coalition members refused the offer, feeling that a neutral facilitator remained a necessity. (Over time, an assistant was hired, who ultimately became a paid coordinator. That position remains, and the Coordinator provides most of the leadership and administration for the group. Tom continues to be involved with the Coalition, attending meetings from time to time and acting as a resource for the Coordinator and the Coalition as a whole.)

The Coalition marked the end of its first year with a luncheon, with much to celebrate. Monthly meetings were attracting between 25 and 40 people, and they weren't the same people at every meeting. By the end of the year, more than 90 individuals had participated in Coalition activities, many of them devoting many hours to task forces and advocacy efforts as well as meetings. The North Quabbin Community Coalition was off and running.

Today

More than 17 years later, the Coalition continues to flourish, and to successfully address issues in the North Quabbin area. Task forces on child sexual assault, teen pregnancy, and youth development have spun off into successful, independent programs. The North Quabbin Coalition became the model for several others around the state, all of which are still going concerns.

The success of the Coalition rests on its beginnings. It filled a need, but it would not have been effective - and would not have lasted - if it hadn't started with a vision and inclusiveness that fostered trust among members and led to substantive achievement.

Example 2: The East Quabbin Alliance (EQUAL) Collaborates for Community Change

This story is adapted with permission from AHEC/Community Partners' Healthy Communities Newsletter, Mar.-Apr. 2002 issue

In the beginning: coming together for a purpose

Some coalitions are born of a crisis. Others, like EQUAL (the East Quabbin Alliance ), in Barre, Massachusetts, are created by a desire to make long-term improvements in a community.

Coalitions can be complex community organisms, and it is often hard to pinpoint an exact moment of creation. While there wasn't a single burning issue that got EQUAL going, many people in the area had shared concerns, and were eager to work together for change.

EQUAL's roots can be traced to the local Barre Family Health Center that it eventually helped save (more on this below). In 1999, to help raise the understanding of community health approaches in Barre, Dr. Joseph Stenger, a staff physician at the center, and Suzanne Cashman, of the Center for Family and Community Health at the UMass Medical School, organized a series of discussions about the blending of clinical medicine, public health, and community activism in a Healthy Communities model.

These discussions stimulated interest in developing a community health coalition, and a core group of residents came together to form EQUAL. They described the new group as "a community-wide coalition committed to nurturing the quality of life for all those living in the East Quabbin Region."

"I was resistant to getting involved at first," says Sue Coles, a member of EQUAL's steering committee, "because I didn't want to be part of a bureaucratic boondoggle." But she was pleasantly surprised when she first started attending meetings to find that the group was intent on making changes in the community.

In 2001, Healthy Communities Massachusetts granted scholarships to the eight members of EQUAL's steering committee, enabling them to attend the Healthy Communities Massachusetts Institute. With lessons on community visioning techniques, asset mapping, issue framing, planning, evaluating progress, and more, the group came away feeling prepared to take on the challenges ahead.

"The training session really instilled a lot of confidence for me," says steering committee member Sam Kertiles. "I realized I just had to 'do it,' rather than think about whether or not I could do it. I learned that it really doesn't matter who you are, everyone brings something to the group that can be helpful."

Setting-and sticking to-an agenda

Rather than incorporating and becoming an independent organization that runs programs, the volunteers in EQUAL decided to help existing organizations and agencies in Barre and surrounding towns formulate and carry out their work. "There are already so many assets out there," says Gail Murphy, another steering committee member. "We didn't need another group."

The coalition made an impact on Barre within its first year. One of its projects was to publish a community resource guide, a directory of 232 local agencies and organizations that has proven valuable for organizations with clients who need referrals.

"EQUAL's primary achievement has been to get a lot of the organizations in town to collaborate, cooperate, and share resources," says Stenger. "The organization has become a venue where people can come talk about what their groups are doing."

EQUAL does not sit and wait for existing organizations to come to them, though. The group's members began attending meetings of agencies like the local Youth Commission, which had been stagnating for some time. Thanks to EQUAL's participation, the Youth Commission is now more active than ever, with a group providing support for kids with emotional problems, regular meetings for teens to discuss their concerns, and plans to develop a youth center.

In the youth group, Sam Kertiles worked with local teens on "empathy, understanding and support." After the first eight week session, participants in the group overwhelmingly endorsed it, with one teen commenting that the group had "helped me to grow a little more mature and has showed me better ways to handle my feelings."

EQUAL also saw that work on Barre's open space plan was languishing, so several members restarted the planning process. Martha Varnot, who is active on EQUAL's steering committee, was surprised to find "no growth plan in a community that's growing," and few people concerned enough to create such a plan. EQUAL is helping create that interest, she says, and is working with residents to develop leadership skills and confidence.

Residents were also worried about the local landfill, located right next to the Ware River, the community's primary watershed. In collaboration with the Board of Health, information is being gathered on water safety, recycling, and toxins. "We're using the open space committees work to address the issues posed by the landfill," explains Varnot.

Like any community, the number of issues to be tackled in the Barre region is seemingly endless, but EQUAL has maintained its focus on these two-the environment and youth issues. That focus contributes to their ability to make headway in their work, and helps ensure that new participants in EQUAL know just what they're getting into.

Responding to crisis

Though its focus is on long-term issues, EQUAL has also been able to put out at least one fire. The crisis was a threat to the Family Health Center in Barre-the same health center whose staff introduced the healthy community ideas that led to the coalition's creation.

The clinical staff is like family for many Barre residents. So when several staff positions were cut from the health center in the fall of 2001 due to budget cuts by the facility's parent company, the town felt a loss. EQUAL organized a town forum, inviting Dr. Marianne E. Felice, Interim CEO of UMass Memorial, to address the community's concerns. More than 80 residents attended, an amazing turnout for a town whose population is well under a thousand. (And though the cuts were system-wide, Barre was the only town to hold a forum.)

The efforts to save the center were successful. "I can see the relationship that the town has with the center," Felice said at the forum. While she defended the cuts in staff as necessary to keep the corporation in business, she promised the community that she "wouldn't even consider ever closing the clinic."

"I remember when then-freshman Senator Ted Kennedy cut the ribbon opening that center in 1962," says State Senator Stephen Brewer. "Those clinics are still the most cost effective health delivery system. Thanks to EQUAL, the forum helped put a face on the need and value of that clinic."

Seeking new members, listening to new voices

EQUAL's broad purpose enables its members to work to their own strengths and interests. Sue Coles has committed to bringing other voices to EQUAL that might not otherwise be heard--those of seniors, people with disabilities, and residents who can't come to meetings. Coles goes to these people instead and interviews them as part of what she calls her "Conversations on Community" project.

In the course of these interviews, Coles asks her subjects what they think a healthy community is, what they like about their community, and what they would miss if it were lost. These questions inevitably lead to discussions about what aspects of the community need attention, she says, and those thoughts are taken into account as EQUAL plots its evolving course. Coles writes up her interviews for publication in the Barre Gazette.

Her interviews have lent a wide range of perspectives to EQUAL's work. Edith Swindell, who has lived in Barre for 94 years, said "There should be places for children to play," and stressed the importance of re-connecting residents to the town's natural assets and beauty, saying "I don't think a lot of people have any idea. They go whizzing by and don't see a thing."

"A healthy community means one where people are engaged," says Coles, when asked to respond to some of the questions she puts to her subjects. "It's where people care about connecting with other people to share responsibility and pride in their community." In an ideal world that kind of atmosphere is created naturally, she says, but in reality it needs to be fostered constantly, lest inertia and apathy take over.

Maintaining the momentum

Kertiles says she was "smitten" with EQUAL after attending her first meeting; since then she has been writing grants and creating a newsletter for the organization. She said the core group of EQUAL participants "know that to keep people involved you just need to include them, listen to them, and not judge them. They made me feel like there was a place for me."

That kind of attitude needs to be maintained for the coalition to succeed, agree organizers. "For this to work we need to keep getting new people to participate so that nobody gets stuck taking on jobs they don't want to do," says Coles. "It also has to keep evolving and re-evaluating its mission. We have to keep ourselves open so we can engage more people and keep them interested."

EQUAL relies entirely on volunteer efforts. Members of the steering committee share the responsibilities of chairing meetings, and the Barre Family Health Center provides some services such as photocopying.

After operating with almost no budget its first year, though, EQUAL received a $1,000 Incentive Grant from Healthy Communities Massachusetts, which was matched with a $1,000 gift from the Barre-based Stetson School. The funds will help the group carry on, engage new members, and perhaps pursue new issues, such as the needs of local seniors.

When asked what headline she would want to see in the local newspaper about EQUAL in five years, Kertiles says, "Volunteer-Staffed Teen Center Opens in Barre." Coles sets her sights a bit differently, and offers "EQUAL's Model Community Implemented by U.N."

Example 3: How Public Health Advocate D'Jillisser Kelly is Raising Awareness to Reduce Tobacco Use and Vaping

For decades, the tobacco industry has used menthol as a tool to disguise the harsh effects of cigarette smoke and to lure young people into becoming smokers. More than 18 million people in the U.S. smoke menthol cigarettes – and a recent study states that menthol cigarettes were responsible for “157,000 smoking-related premature deaths” among Black Americans during the period of 1980-2018.

D’Jillisser Kelly, MPH, CP, knows that reaching young people is key to tobacco education and prevention. In fact, most adults who currently smoke began smoking before age 18. As lead project coordinator with No Menthol Movement ATL, an initiative to reduce tobacco use and vaping in Atlanta and surrounding areas, D’Jillisser helps cultivate multigenerational coalitions to address the harm of menthol and other flavored tobacco products.

She shares her journey to public health, discusses the importance of tobacco education, and how youth can use their voices in the QA and full article at this link.

Tool #1: Logistics of the first meeting

1. Find a space that is comfortable, easily accessible, and big enough to hold all the people you expect. Some possibilities are agency or business meeting rooms; the public library; the YMCA; the town hall; service clubs (Elks, Rotary); a church or synagogue; a community center; the high school; or a local college or university.

Depending upon the reason for the coalition, you may want to try to hold the meeting in a place that is significant to the issue. A coalition on homelessness might meet at a shelter, for example; one on education might meet at a school. This might give members a chance to look at the issue firsthand, and might also help to set the tone.

If there are divisions in the community, holding the meeting in a place that is seen as neutral - a neighborhood other than those of any competing factions or groups, a building or institution that isn't identified with a particular organization or group. It's important to be aware of what people identify as "enemy turf," and to be aware that the people in question can be human service workers or local government officials, not just gang members.

2. At the same time, decide when and how long the meeting will be. The time of the meeting should be geared to the needs of the people who most need to be there. The length of the meeting depends on what its goals are. If there's substantive work to be done, it should be long enough to accomplish it, or at least to get a good start.

3. Think about how to arrange the space. Will chairs be in a circle? In rows, with the core group at the front? In small groups? Each of these arrangements makes a statement about how the coalition will operate. Our suggestion is that a circle is much more in keeping with the nature of a coalition, in that it implies no one leader, but assumes equality among members. It leaves open the possibility of different individuals or organizations taking leadership in different circumstances, and encourages a democratic process.

4. Decide who will run the meeting.

• A member of the core group
• A community official or community leader
• Someone connected very closely with the issue (the director of the agency most directly responsible for it, for instance)
• A coalition member with particularly good facilitation skills
• An outside facilitator

5. Arrange for child care, transportation, or other services that some people may need in order to attend the meeting. This may be especially important if you're trying to attract young parents or low income community or target group members.

6. Finally, make sure that everyone knows about the time and place of the meeting. Even if people were told when they were first contacted about the coalition, send a reminder, or call again, or both. For most busy people, until something is in their appointment books, it doesn't exist. If the time and place are already written down, a reminder will help to cement the idea of the meeting in people's minds.

Tool #2: Defining Your Coalition's Membership

Contributed by Tom Wolff

The definition of coalition membership varies widely. Often the mission or funding of a coalition predetermines who the membership will be. Generally in AHEC/Community Partners coalitions, the mission is defined as improving the quality of life in the community. Under this broad statement, anyone in the community who is willing to work on improving the quality of life in that community is considered eligible to be a member.

You can consider the following issues to clarify the limitations and opportunities created by certain definitions of membership.

Address the issues of inclusion and exclusion

The group development literature informs us that inclusion and exclusion are key variables in the start-up of any group. Coalition start-ups are no exception. Initial coalition discussions about who should be invited, and who should not, are often among the coalition's first decisions.

If the goal of the coalition is to mobilize as many resources from as many sectors of the community as possible to work on community issues, then one needs to make initial membership decisions that would create a sense of equal access to the coalition. Developing and maintaining the open membership system requires a constant examination of coalition practices. Do new members get introduced when they arrive? Do they feel welcome? How does one bring new members up-to-date on what's happening?

If coalitions limit who can be members, who can be on steering committees, whose resources they are interested in tapping, then by definition they are excluding people from the community and the coalition will not be able to tap into those people's capacities and resources to solve the community's problems.

Decide how money relates to membership

Many coalitions ask people who are members to show their support by paying a fee to cover coalition expenses. How the issue of money and membership is constructed will have a large impact on the coalition. If the coalition sets the fee as a membership fee, then it says a member is one who pays the fee. An alternate approach is to say that anyone who supports the mission of the coalition and signs up as a member is a member, and those who are able to provide financial support become sponsors of the coalition. This separates the issue of membership from financial support.

By setting a fee as a membership criteria, one potentially eliminates low-income citizens, even if one establishes a scholarship or sliding fee scale, since having to make requests for that can be a humiliating experience.

Clarify expectations about members' activity levels

Although membership can be claimed by those who sign up as members or those who send financial support, the key component of coalition membership is activity. Without coalition members providing their time and their efforts, there is no coalition. Thus, a key factor in the success of any coalition is the amount of energy and time invested by its members in the community. No matter how many people have paid their dues, if you cannot get members to sign up for activities and task forces, the projects that the coalition takes on will fail.

Strive for a multi-sectoral, multi-cultural coalition

How well the coalition membership represents the various sectors and subcultures of a community is another key variable in membership. For membership to be truly representative, efforts have to be made to reach those who don't easily come to coalition activities.

The hardest to reach individuals tend to be those at the very top of the power structure--the heads of corporations, police chiefs, superintendents of schools--and those at the very bottom of the power scale--the disenfranchised, the citizens. Specific efforts involving individual, personalized outreach need to be focused on those groups not well represented, so the coalition can be both multi-sectoral and multicultural

Engage citizens

Although coalitions proclaim themselves as empowering institutions, giving voice to the members of the community, they often fail at involving citizens in their efforts. Coalitions are often quite successful at engaging certain components of a community to interact in daytime meetings, in formal settings. But this approach presents enormous barriers to involving grassroots citizens, barriers including: time, money, language, family responsibilities, transportation, etc.

There are no simple answers as to how to best engage citizens in coalition activities. To change the meetings to evenings and provide interpreters and day care may be ways of enticing citizens to a meeting, but one is likely to lose many human service providers with after-work events.

The strength of a coalition is really the sum of the capacities of its members. Seeking a broad representation of active members and maintaining an open door are critical to coalition success.

Tool #3: Including Diverse Participants

Effective community collaborations must identify the diversity of the community (racial, ethnic, gender, class, etc.) and find ways to celebrate this diversity. Effective coalition action requires engaging and understanding the whole community.

Collaborations often declare that their goals include:

• Celebrating the diversity within a community,
• Being inclusive of all members of the community,
• Encouraging the participation of all the sectors in a community.

Yet many collaborations struggle to bring this diversity into their midst. Although they declare themselves to be open to all members of the community, in practice they represent the majority, the formal structure, and established power brokers, rather than the community at large.

For other collaborations, the issue of diversity and inclusivity may not be high on their priority list, but may be brought to them by members of sub-groups in the community who feel excluded.

Inclusivity Checklist by Beth Rosenthal, M.S

The Inclusivity Checklist developed by Beth Rosenthal (1997) is an instrument that assists collaboration members in analyzing the issues of inclusivity and diversity across a wide range of their collaboration activities. The easiest and most obvious way to gauge your group's success in this area is to look around a room at a collaboration or a steering committee meeting. Is the diversity of the community represented in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, age, etc.

Instructions: Use this Inclusivity Checklist to measure how prepared your coalition is for drawing strength from diversity, and to identify areas for improvement. Place a check mark in the box next to each statement that applies to your group. If you cannot put a check in the box, this may indicate an area for change.

____ The leadership of our coalition is multiracial and multicultural.

____ We make special efforts to cultivate new leaders, particularly women and people of color.

____ Our mission, operations and products reflect the contributions of diverse cultural and social groups.

____ We are committed to fighting social oppression within the coalition and in our work with the community.

____ Members of diverse cultural and social groups are full participants in all aspects of our coalition's work.

____ Meetings are not dominated by speakers from any one group.

____ All segments of our community are represented in decision making.

____ There is sensitivity and awareness regarding different religious and cultural holidays, customs, recreation and food preferences.

____ We communicate clearly, and people of different cultures feel comfortable sharing their opinions and participating in meetings.

____ We prohibit the use of stereotypes and prejudicial comments.

____ Ethnic, racial and sexual slurs or jokes are not welcome.

If the assessment indicates that, although the coalition has declared itself to be inclusive, it is falling short on that goal, there are many steps that can be taken. One obvious way to proceed is to commit resources to increasing the engagement of various community groups with the coalition. We have seen four very effective ways for this to happen:

• Provide mini-grants to community groups
• Hire community outreach workers from the community you wish to engage
• Provide a community organizer to the community
• Develop leadership training programs for community leaders

Tool #4: Principles for Coalition Success

Contributed by Tom Wolff

Identifying one set of principles for successful coalitions is quite a challenge because of the great variety in what is called a "coalition." Not only do the definitions of coalition vary (from two agencies joining together in a grant submission, to a broad community group with representatives from every sector), but definitions of coalition success vary as well (i.e., we have succeeded if we get the Chief of Police to join our coalition vs. we have succeeded if we get the Chief of Police fired).

That said, there are a few general principles that can be adapted for most coalitions and partnerships.

Clearly define your shared mission and goals

Coalition members should clearly define their shared mission and goals to make sure that the identified goals incorporate the self-interests of the various constituencies. Coalition building requires both a willingness to set aside personal agendas for a common good, and a realistic understanding that addressing the self-interests of participants is crucial. Walking the tight rope between these agendas is critical to coalition success.

Include diverse members

Membership in coalitions needs to be inclusive, allowing all members of a community who endorse the coalition' mission to join in its efforts. Inclusive membership will occur only through active recruiting of the two power extremes in the community-the most powerful (business, clergy, city hall representatives, etc.) and the least powerful (members of neighborhood groups, youth, people of color, the poor, etc.). The geographic boundaries of the coalition will also be decided by those directly involved.

Plan for organizational competence

The coalition's organizational functioning and structure must be clear and competent enough so that the coalition can perform basic tasks effectively. This includes:

• Effective leadership. Coalitions need to have clearly identified leadership structures, but also need to share leadership as broadly as possible. Building new leadership is a crucial role for coalitions, especially among community groups which have been disenfranchised.
• A clear, democratic decision making process, which allows for broad input into decisions and for conflict and disagreement to occur and be resolved.
• Most broad coalition efforts require experienced staff. The staff must have group and organizational process skills and community development philosophy and skills.
• Coalitions must develop at least a rudimentary ongoing system of planning.
• Active and effective communication is critical. This should occur both among members of the coalition and between the coalition and both the community and outside systems (i.e., the State).
• Mobilization and effective use of resources from within the coalition (as well as from outside) is essential.

Focus on "doable" actions

Successful coalitions plan and carry out actions that are doable and thus prove their effectiveness to themselves and their communities through concrete results. Early achievements or victories will illustrate to the members and the community that change can occur. A short agenda of doable tasks also prevents a coalition from spreading itself too thin.

Affirm and celebrate!

Coalition activities need to include fun and must affirm the strengths and joys of the community. Indeed, one of the great gifts of effective coalitions to their members and to their communities is the gift of hope. This emerges from an optimistic coalition approach, one that says most problems can be effectively addressed. Leaders will help emphasize the hope and accomplishments of the coalition, as well as its process.

Be realistic about time, and persist

The agendas of broad coalitions that address the quality of life in communities can be overwhelming. The members need to take a long-range view, understanding that the coalition's agenda will take time and persistence. Although some single-issue coalitions are defined as short-term efforts, most coalitions require longer time frames to create the needed societal changes. Tackling big issues in manageable pieces holds for both long- and short-term efforts.

Monitor and assess

The process of developing a coalition to address quality of life issues in a community is very complex. The literature can provide us with some direction, but each coalition effort must be guided by its own internal review and evaluation process. Whether this review is done at an annual meeting discussion of the coalition's process and outcomes or through a more rigorous evaluation scheme, an effective coalition will have the capacity to learn from its successes and its disappointments, for it surely will have both.

A PowerPoint presentation summarizing the major points in the section.

• Why is maintaining the coalition important?

• What needs to be maintained?

• How do you maintain a coalition?

• What are alternatives to maintenance?

Suppose that you have started a coalition, and suppose your coalition is working well, just as you envisioned. It's got lots of members, a stable structure, support from the community, and -- most important -- a growing list of community achievements.

Congratulations, and take a bow.

But don't bask too long in the applause, for your work isn't over. The coalition's work needs to be maintained.

In this section we will cover the importance of maintenance, what needs to be maintained, and how to maintain your work successfully. We'll also explore some alternatives to simple maintenance -- coalition growth, for example, or changing direction, and even ending. But the key point about maintenance is that it won't happen all by itself. It takes effort -- conscious, planned, and ongoing. To elaborate a little:

Why is maintaining the coalition important?

Let's admit that starting a coalition, or any group, can be challenging. It takes skill, sensitivity, timing, persistence, perhaps also faith; it brings out the best in you. Yet challenging though it sometimes may be, start-up is only half the battle. Truthfully, it's probably less than half. For now that the coalition is standing on its own two feet, it needs to start striding toward its community goals. Those accomplishments lie in the future. To ensure a successful future, the coalition needs to stay healthy, relevant, and effective. To do that, it needs to be maintained.

Certainly in the physical world maintenance is necessary, for living and nonliving things alike. Machines need servicing. Houses need repairs. Cars need maintenance. Computers and digital systems need updates, backups, and periodic attention. And of course, our human bodies need to be maintained as well, which is why we have health checkups, physical activity, and other forms of preventive care. Can you think of many things that will have long and productive lifetimes with no maintenance at all?

Physical-world maintenance is taken very seriously. In business and industry, for example, or in local government, physical property is maintained regularly. Managers devise schedules for doing so, put appropriate people in charge, and make repairs as necessary. In some cases, such as elevators or restaurants, maintenance and inspections are required by law. These are examples of what's called preventive maintenance. We do it before things get into trouble, and to prevent trouble from occurring in the first place.

Maintenance, and preventive maintenance, also apply to the social world -- to partnerships, organizations, and relationships of all kinds. Coalitions may need particular attention because they often bring together people and organizations with different priorities, responsibilities, cultures, and expectations. Few fixed rules tell a coalition exactly where -- or how -- to go, and members have a voice in determining its direction. Simply put, the complexity of a coalition means that regular attention and renewal are especially important.

It is true that as technology advances, some physical systems may need less routine maintenance. But no coalition will ever go 100,000 miles without a tune-up. Human relationships, organizations, and partnerships continually change, and no technology is likely to make thoughtful maintenance unnecessary.

To put it in a nutshell: The environment - the outer and the inner environment - is always changing. Effective adaptations to those changes are necessary for organizational health. Renewal - conscious and deliberate renewal - is a basic need of organizational life. Once you take the coalition, or most any community group, for granted, problems can begin to develop unnoticed. This is why it's important for coalitions and community groups to pay attention to maintenance and to work out procedures for maintaining their effective functioning on a regular basis.

What needs to be maintained?

What needs to be maintained are the key structures, functions, relationships, and purposes of the coalition that helped get it started in the first place.

To make the analogy to the human body: If you had a health checkup, your health care provider would examine different systems and how well they were working together. For a coalition, the key ingredients are social and organizational rather than physical, but they are no less real or important.

• The coalition's reason for being - its vision, mission, and objectives
• The basic governance and operating rules of the coalition
• The coalition leadership
• The coalition membership
• The division of labor, within and among the leaders and members
• The coalition's strategic and action plans, both short- and longer-term
• The coalition's actions and results, so that it continues accomplishing what it intends to accomplish in the community
• The coalition's funding and other resources, so that those accomplishments can be continued
• The coalition's visibility in the larger community
• The coalition's public support
• The spirit of the coalition, including the trust, relationships, sense of belonging, and mutual respect among those involved, which are fundamental to the coalition's continued existence. This point is addressed at greater length further on in this section.

Each of these categories can be subdivided and elaborated upon. But now, having identified what needs to be maintained, how do you go about the actual maintenance?

Before proceeding, though, here's a reality check. Many coalitions -- and many community groups and organizations -- do not engage in regular planned maintenance. They may not be fully conscious of the need, or it may not be high enough on their list of priorities. They may be too busy, or perceive themselves as so, or other more pressing tasks may intervene. They may feel that they don't know how to do maintenance work, or that it's not particularly enjoyable.

Many reasons may apply, singly or in combination. The bottom line, though, is that planned maintenance, carried out in practice, may happen less often than it should.

It's not that a coalition cannot survive without planned maintenance. It can. Things may keep running on their own, and running reasonably well, for quite a while. Many organizations also develop informal ways of correcting problems as they arise.

Our point, though, is that a coalition or group that engages in regular and planned maintenance is, in the long run, likely to be better positioned to accomplish its goals and sustain its accomplishments over time.

How do you maintain a coalition?

The first steps in maintaining a coalition, or any group, involve recognizing that maintenance deserves attention. To state them as specific guidelines:

• Develop the awareness that maintenance is necessary.
• Make a decision to engage in it.

These initial steps can be among the hardest parts of the process. But once you -- as individual members and then as a group -- have recognized the need and made the decision to create and implement a maintenance plan, you are well on your way.

• Design a maintenance plan.
• Carry out your maintenance plan.

Suppose you have the awareness and have made the decision. Let's think about the next question: How do you put a maintenance plan together? A plan can help make maintenance intentional rather than something done only when problems arise. In designing your plan, you have a number of choices to make at the very beginning. We'll list them, then give a little more detail after each item below.

Design a maintenance plan

Who should design the plan?

Among your options: The plan can be designed by the coalition's leaders; a subgroup of the leaders; a subgroup of members; or the larger membership itself.

In many cases, coalition leaders may take responsibility for getting the process started, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have to design the plan themselves. A small group of experienced and interested members may be able to develop a draft. The plan can then be presented to leadership and the larger membership for review, discussion, and revision as needed.

The plan's details will depend on what kind of coalition or group you are. If you have five or six regular active members, one or two people may naturally take the lead. But when 5 or 6 become 50 or 60, you have the option of forming a larger or more representative committee to plan what is needed and perhaps carry it out.

How comprehensive should the plan be?

Should the plan, and therefore the actual maintenance, include all aspects of the way the coalition runs, or just several?

There are multiple items you can look at. Your choice will again depend on the resources and the particulars of your group. But when you start, a good general guideline may be to take a middle path. Maintenance for you may not mean reviewing every small detail, but it may mean paying close attention to major areas such as meeting quality, participation, leadership, progress toward goals, communication, and resources.

In other words, make the work feasible for you. It's good to challenge yourself a little, but don't create such a complicated maintenance process that the coalition cannot realistically carry it out.

How formal should the plan be?

You can have detailed written procedures, calendars, checklists, and records, or you can use a relatively simple plan with a few agreed-upon questions and review dates. You can document results in meeting notes, shared documents, surveys, or other forms. Some coalitions may use digital project-management systems; others may need nothing more complicated than a short written checklist.

Once again, the possibilities vary, and your choices will depend on the size and nature of your group. A middle path may make the most sense for many groups, at least at the start. Too little structure can allow important issues to be overlooked, while excessive formality can create unnecessary work and rigidity. As a rule, the level of formality should fit the coalition itself.

Who should carry out the plan?

Briefly, your options here are similar to those listed under maintenance plan design: coalition leaders themselves; a subgroup of leaders; a designated committee; staff; or members with responsibility for particular areas.

Three additional guidelines may help:

• First, the people carrying out the plan may be the same as those designing it, but not necessarily; the people responsible for implementation should generally have a meaningful voice in plan design, but the planners and implementers need not always be the same people.
• Second, implementation of the plan often works best when responsibilities are connected to existing roles. For example, those responsible for membership may take the lead in reviewing recruitment and retention, while those responsible for communications may monitor outreach and public visibility.
• Third, implementation is more likely to succeed when responsibilities and accountability are clear. Even highly capable and committed people benefit from knowing what they are responsible for, who else is involved, and how progress will be reviewed.

How frequently should maintenance take place?

The possibilities range from frequent check-ins to occasional comprehensive reviews. A useful guideline is: not so often that maintenance overwhelms the coalition's actual work, and not so infrequently that important problems have time to grow unnoticed.

What does this mean in practice? A yearly comprehensive review may work well for many groups, with shorter check-ins throughout the year. Areas that have experienced problems or rapid change may need more frequent attention. The maintenance schedule does not have to be the same for every aspect of the coalition's work -- some areas may be reviewed frequently and others less often.

The answers to these questions suggest that there are many ways to design and carry out a maintenance plan, and that there is no single approach that is always best. The best way to do maintenance will depend upon the nature, history, composition, and goals of your particular group, as well as its resources and commitment to the process. Whatever your maintenance choice, it has to be workable, useful, and realistic enough to become part of the coalition's actual practice.

I once belonged to a well-established coalition that took maintenance seriously and practiced what it preached. At the end of the week, there would be weekly review meetings in the office - often light-hearted (we all knew it was Friday afternoon) but serious and systematic too, a sort of checking in on the week gone by and agenda setting for the week ahead. This probably could just as well have been on Monday, but Fridays worked fine in our case. It seemed to strike the right balance in tone.

Then once a year, when the weather warmed up, we'd get together outside and have an all-day meeting away from the office, out in the country - usually at the home of one of our coalition leaders, who in her never-to-be-forgotten kindness also laid out a great lunch. Once again, we reviewed and planned, but this time at greater length and with a longer vision. Most of us looked forward to these meetings. We may not have followed up on everything we said we'd do. But they did help in our coalition's maintenance, and bound us more closely as coalition members. The meetings weren't perfect, but they helped do the job; no one would have wanted to give them up.

Suppose, though, that you have now made your choices. How do you go about carrying them out? How should you actually conduct maintenance in practice? This leads to Step #4:

Carry out your maintenance plan.

Once again, you have options for doing so. They include:

External Reviews

These are reviews by outside reviewers or consultants. Sometimes they may be required or supported by a funding source. External reviews can vary among themselves:

• The reviewers can be paid professionals from outside the community, peer reviewers from another organization, or knowledgeable local volunteers.
• The reviewers can examine your policies, practices, and accomplishments across the board, or focus on a smaller number of specific areas.
• The reviews can last several hours, or several days.
• The external reviews can be combined with internal reviews, as noted below.

In any case, the criteria used to conduct the review should be clear to everyone. Ideally, they should be worked out in advance with the reviewers. Coalition members should know what is being reviewed, why, and how the results will be used.

External or outside reviews may be less common for coalitions than for some other types of organizations, but they can be useful in the right circumstances.

Not surprisingly, they have their own advantages and disadvantages. They can be expensive. Reviewers may not fully understand your organization or community, and they may use criteria that do not fit your goals. The value of the review will depend on the reviewer's expertise, understanding of community context, sensitivity, and communication skills.

On the other hand, such a review can provide a helpful outside perspective by examining your operations with fresh eyes and identifying issues you may not have noticed. Outside reviewers may also contribute specialized expertise or experience from other organizations. In some cases, a funder, partner, or public agency may provide or support the review.

"Our coalition used to get periodic visits from our representative in the state office. They gave us some funding. So she was there to check up on us, we knew that. And this reviewer, who was actually a nice person, knew that we knew it. She also knew that we knew that she was just doing her job. So while nobody was actually eager for her to visit, we accepted her, and in fact she did have some good ideas for us. She was tactful enough to express them in a way that didn't alienate us. Looking back at it, she helped us more than we would admit."

All the other maintenance procedures noted below are internal, conducted by the people in the coalition itself.

Internal Reviews (which subdivide into:)

Formal reviews. What makes them "formal"? They have their own policies and procedures; they take place on a regular basis; they are built into the coalition's routine; and they are likely to produce some form of written or otherwise documented record.

Formal reviews can also vary:

• They can take the form of an annual program review, with predetermined methods and questions. A meeting of the executive committee or other governing group can be set aside for it.
• Or instead of a self-review conducted by the whole group, a subcommittee or designated group may conduct the review and report its findings to the larger governing group.
• The review can also be done at a membership meeting of the full group, or a report prepared by others can be shared with the membership for discussion.
• Sometimes the review is not of the entire operations of the coalition, but of specific practices -- communications, budget, membership, accessibility, community engagement, etc. This more limited type of review can also be done by the full group or a subgroup.
• It's also possible to rotate a series of smaller reviews, so that one aspect of the coalition's work gets reviewed every year or every few months. In this way, maintenance proceeds on a staggered schedule: this month, funding; next fall, membership review, and so on.

Your coalition or group can decide to carry out any of these types of reviews. Once that decision is made, then it's a matter of setting up procedures to make sure the review is implemented, completed, discussed, and used.

Informal reviews. Maintenance does not always have to be a formal procedure, with structured agendas, checklists, and written reports. A coalition can decide upon and carry out less structured ways of collecting the information it needs to see how things are going. For example:

Feedback at scheduled meetings. A natural opportunity for informal review and maintenance is at the end of scheduled meetings. A short portion of each general meeting can be devoted to feedback. ("Any comments on this meeting?" "Are we going about things in the right way?" "What worked well?" "What could we improve?" "Did everyone who wanted to contribute have a meaningful opportunity to do so?") The same can apply to executive committee or subcommittee meetings.

There are many variations of this concept. To cite a few specific practices:

• One meeting facilitator we know always used a "plus-delta" format at the end of each meeting. She would ask the group what it liked about the meeting (the "pluses"), and what could have been better (the "deltas," or things needing change). The responses were recorded as reminders for how things might proceed next time.
• At other meetings, the end of the meeting was devoted to "good and welfare" -- meaning that if someone had something to say for the good and welfare of the group, they were invited and encouraged to say it. In this writer's experience, that practice dates back to summer camp! But the basic idea of leaving room for open feedback can apply in many other settings too.
• At one large organization, a mental health center, the Superintendent used to hold monthly general staff meetings. Everyone was invited, and many staff attended, from psychiatrists to night shift attendants, and from business managers to groundskeepers. The Superintendent would make a few general announcements, but then the floor was open. Anyone was invited to comment freely on any aspect of the Center's operation, and because trust had been built through the process, many did just that. These meetings were useful for reviewing operations, identifying needed changes, and strengthening morale.

Feedback by mail, e-mail, telephone, text, or online survey. From time to time, coalition members can be asked for feedback on particular aspects of coalition performance and for suggestions for improvement. Depending on the coalition and its members, this can be done through e-mail, telephone, text messages, paper forms, anonymous surveys, online forms, or other accessible methods.

Retreats. These are usually extended meetings for coalition members or staff held away from the coalition's usual place of business, sometimes at a special retreat center or other comfortable location, and sometimes led by an outside facilitator. Their purpose is often to review, maintain, and refresh the group's work, though retreats can also be held to design new plans, or to consider a specific topic or challenge. Their potential advantages include a change of setting, freedom from some daily distractions, time for deeper discussion, and an opportunity to focus on longer-term questions.

Daily communication. The process of maintaining your coalition can also be part of daily communication, although one might not call it "maintenance" or a "review" as such. In this sense, maintenance is part of almost everything you do. Making it safe to express different opinions, keeping members informed about what is happening, checking in with someone who's having a difficult day, recognizing a contribution, or resolving a misunderstanding early -- each of these small acts maintains the coalition, even though one might not give them a "maintenance" label. These small interactions, multiplied over months and years, help sustain the energy and relationships behind the coalition's work.

Keep in mind that any of these methods can be combined with any other. Feedback at meetings can be combined with surveys or individual conversations. Strong ongoing communication can be combined with occasional retreats or formal reviews. Maintenance of a coalition can -- and should -- occur in many different ways.

Keeping the Flame Alive

We've spoken about maintenance so far almost as if it's mostly step-by-step, almost by-the-numbers. In some ways it is, and in some ways it should be. But there's another part of maintenance that is much harder to reduce to action steps -- namely keeping the spirit of the coalition alive.

People join groups to get things done, but they also want their participation to be meaningful, welcoming, and sustainable. Getting work done is essential; yet if belonging to the coalition is all work and no connection, participation can become draining. Members may begin asking themselves why they should keep giving their time and energy if the experience no longer feels worthwhile.

Wise coalition leaders therefore pay attention not only to tasks, but also to relationships and belonging. Build in some opportunities to relax, connect, celebrate, and simply enjoy one another's company. Sharing a meal, recognizing birthdays or milestones, holding a cookout, taking time to celebrate a success, or creating other informal moments together can strengthen the human relationships behind the coalition. Members stay involved not just because of the work, but because they feel respected, connected, and valued as whole people.

All this is part of coalition maintenance, just as much as any itemized review process.

Leaders, take note.

What are alternatives to maintenance?

Maintaining the coalition is important; maintaining the coalition may be crucial, which is why we've spent so much time discussing it. But we haven't yet mentioned one essential point: Maintaining the coalition, in the sense of simply continuing what you've done before, may not be what you want or need to do.

People change, and so do groups. Community situations change; so do community needs. Coalitions are not immune from change, and your coalition may want to change with the times. Simple maintenance, holding on to the status quo, is not your only option.

What are the other options? You can grow; or spin off something new; or change your focus; or cut back; or simply end. Your coalition has choices. You can pursue any one of these options, or several of them at different times. But which option should you choose, and how should you go about choosing it? We'll consider these options in turn, along with some of the conditions that might be favorable for each one.

(Much of what follows is adapted from The Spirit of the Coalition, by Bill Berkowitz and Tom Wolff; see Resources section following.)

Growing. You can grow. This is a natural tendency of groups and organizations, especially if they are doing well.

And suppose you are doing well. Suppose too that the previously-suggested maintenance checks have been completed to most people's satisfaction. Then why not do more of what you're doing, or branch out? You have taken on some tasks successfully; how about some more? Or how about a new challenge, in a different area?

Coalition growth may be the right way for you to go:

• When the coalition has a track record of stability
• When it has a track record of success
• When the community need is present
• When the resources -- people, money, time, relationships, and capacity -- to sustain the work will be present as well
• When your members want to grow, and
• When the community supports that direction, too.

When you start thinking about growing, look before you leap, or even step. It's helpful for your coalition to know some of the challenges that may come with expansion:

• If you grow bigger, you will need more resources to sustain the work.
• Growth also puts more pressure on coalition leadership, members, staff, and systems. Leadership and membership have limits and can only do so much -- even though growth can also create valuable opportunities for the coalition.

So you may feel called upon to make trade-offs. As one coalition leader mentioned:

"We're very cautious about taking on new projects. But over the last two or three years our coalitions have gotten additional money to do special projects in neighborhood development -- it absorbs a lot of our focus and time. At this point, we see it as a priority to be developing these grassroots community mobilization kinds of efforts. So it's a trade-off we're willing to make. But it's a risky trade-off."

• As the coalition gets bigger, more visible, and more accepted in the community, there can be pressure to become a direct provider or administrator of community services. This can take you away from planning, coordinating, convening, advocacy, or other roles that may be central to the coalition's purpose. You may not necessarily want to become a direct service provider.
• Finally, if you grow, you can get spread too thin. Then overload begins to affect both people and the quality of the work. In this sense, success can create its own risks if growth happens faster than the coalition's capacity can support.

Resolving the issue of growth. While all these issues surrounding growth should make you stop and think, they are manageable. The resolution begins by realizing that growth is not all or nothing. It's not simply grow or stay stagnant, or grow or die. Your growth can instead be targeted and deliberate. You can choose the degree to which you want to grow, when you want to do it, in what respects, and how. You can engage in a form of coalition career planning.

When you do, it always helps if you build from a stable base. One coalition leader put it this way:

"We need to be strong with what we already have, and be certain that growth is in a healthy and productive direction, before we start tinkering in new areas. Each time we grow, we're starting all over again. For us to start a whole new area, it's probably going to take some time for us to learn to do it right, and I'd like to make our current work more solid before we start approaching anything else."

So in a nutshell: If you choose to grow, you want to guide the process intentionally rather than simply reacting to every new opportunity. With thought and experience, decisions about growth can become easier and more productive.

"Spinning off." Growth -- planned and controlled -- may be a goal for your coalition, and a sensible and wise one. But choosing growth is not the only possibility. Whatever new initiatives the coalition takes on need not remain part of the coalition permanently. You can take on something new, help establish it, and then transition it to an independent organization or another appropriate home.

This is what we mean by "spinning off." It is similar to incubating a program until it is strong enough to operate independently.

Spinning a program off may be desirable:

• When a particular community need continues to exist
• When your coalition has addressed that need, but doesn't want or isn't best positioned to continue doing so
• When another group is willing and able to take responsibility for the work

Coalitions cannot handle all community needs, and it may make sense to transition a program or responsibility to another organization. Yet when you spin something off, there can be challenges. One key concern is the extent of the coalition's continuing responsibility. How long should you provide support? What responsibilities stay with the coalition, and which move fully to the new organization? You don't want to remain so involved that the transition defeats its own purpose, but you also don't want to withdraw before the new effort is ready.

A different but equally relevant concern is that once a new venture becomes independent, it may develop differently from what the coalition originally imagined. That is part of what independence means.

Spinning off new programs -- and sometimes developing new programs specifically so they can eventually operate independently -- can be an excellent choice. Success is not guaranteed, but you can improve the chances by planning the transition carefully and making future roles clear. You can agree to provide technical assistance, consultation, referrals, shared resources, or other support for a defined period, and establish what the coalition will and will not continue to do.

Still, the reality is that when you spin a program off, much of it is outside your control -- which is often part of the reason you wanted to spin it off in the first place. It's helpful to accept that reality and agree on boundaries from the beginning.

Changing focus. An effective coalition does not have to grow, and it does not have to spin off new programs. It can simply change its focus. This may be a good idea when the original objectives of the coalition have been met, and when the coalition membership and leadership are motivated to take on other tasks. If you originally came together to improve public transportation, for example, and new bus lines are now running, you might choose to tackle job training because people can now more easily get to good jobs. Or you could focus on youth employment, affordable health care, or virtually anything else the community identifies as important.

One coalition we know came together around medical interpreting, and put interpretation programs in place. That done, they were ready to move on:

"The translation gap had been narrowed, so we just thought there was no need at that point to continue, and that we could place our energy onto other issues. For example, we've been talking right now about youth... and what's interesting is people who are already working with youth are coming to us. That's the difference. Before, we were knocking on their door; now they're knocking on our door."

So this coalition, in a natural sequence of events, looks toward a new issue. Their track record of success both attracts new members and increases the prospects for more success in the future. This is one common evolutionary path of the coalition, and a fully justifiable one.

Cutting back. In a different scenario, suppose a coalition hits tough times, external or internal, financial or organizational. Or suppose another group in the community emerges that is providing some of the same functions and doing them well. If either of these situations comes along, and if they are severe or prolonged, you can scale back.

There may be good reasons to do so. You may need to consolidate after a period of healthy growth. You may have grown too fast and need to make adjustments. A large grant may be coming to an end. Another group may now be willing to take over an activity that has been consuming substantial coalition resources. Under these circumstances, cutting back could be a reasonable idea, at least for the moment. It can reduce overload, bring attention back to core priorities, and prompt more careful decisions about how limited resources are used.

Some coalition members considered these options:

"If we have to shrink back to the core, that's not a defeat. It's an awareness that we don't want to lose the most important things we do, which are the meetings and the newsletter...."

***

"Our funding cycle is on the downward trend. We're in the fourth year of a major grant, so the amount of time for the coordinator is going to be cut in half, and so the steering committee needs to think about what they want this coalition to be involved with. Do they want to go back to the more subdued state it was in prior to these last few years, or what? And if they want it to be staffed at the same level, then what are they going to do about the funding sources?"

These types of events, like others in the paragraphs above, are normal events in a coalition's development. And, as a reminder, neither growth nor downsizing has to be forever. If you cut back now, that doesn't mean you'll never grow again. The path of coalitions, and of social systems generally, is rarely a straight line.

Ending. You can also decide to end, and simply stop operating. This can be a difficult event, but it doesn't necessarily mean failure.

Coalitions are not immortal, nor are they expected to be. A coalition can outlive its original purpose and decide to disband. The need that brought people together may have been addressed or changed substantially. Leaders and members may take on new responsibilities, change life priorities, become ill, retire, move away, or shift their attention elsewhere. And if the initial impetus or funding for starting the coalition came from outside, that support may eventually change or end.

If the goal or mission has been accomplished, congratulations are in order for a job well done. Even if some goals have not been reached, and even if the coalition must end because of circumstances beyond its control, its work may still have made a meaningful difference. Relationships, knowledge, programs, policies, and community capacity developed through the coalition may continue after the formal organization ends. And if the need arises again, former members may be able to reconnect or build something new from the experience they gained.

Staying the way you are. One more option: You can simply keep going much as you are. If you've been doing something well, why not continue it? Your coalition may want to do so when it has built a track record of success, when the original need still exists, when community support is stable, when things are going well, and when leaders, members, and community partners remain satisfied with the coalition's direction.

Staying the same sounds easy, but it is not always easy to do. The outer world, and your inner world, changes. There are ongoing pressures to grow, change direction, take on new responsibilities, or end. To make a conscious choice to continue the same core work while adapting only where necessary requires discipline.

It can be a reasonable and worthwhile choice. But it's not necessarily the best choice in every situation. The danger is that a coalition can become less responsive or less relevant if it never reevaluates its work. Change can sometimes bring new energy. If you stay much the way you are, you still need to ensure that the coalition's purpose, relationships, and work remain meaningful.

To restate a major theme: Will your coalition be better off changing in some way? It might, or it might not; there's no single answer. Your answer should depend on an assessment of your coalition's and your community's present needs, priorities, resources, support, and accomplishments, weighed against the costs and benefits of other options available to you. Let's clarify this point in the next part of our discussion.

In Summary

We have treated these different coalition directions as independent options, but that has been partly for purposes of explanation. In practice, the options often overlap, with the predominant pattern changing over time as community conditions and organizational needs change.

The reality of coalition maintenance and evolution lies closer to this: You keep going because you're doing some good. You have some core functions. Perhaps you take on something new from time to time, wisely or not. Maybe that something ends on its own. Maybe circumstances bring it to an end; but maybe it works, and you keep it. Or maybe you spin it off, so that it can stand on its own. New opportunities keep coming along. You can choose among them.

How can those choices best be made? To answer that question, it will help to reflect on and review the key elements that ultimately maintain and sustain both coalitions and other community organizations:

Accomplishment. First, of course, is accomplishment. If the coalition is doing useful work and that work is recognized, the community is more likely to continue supporting it. New members, partners, and funding may be easier to attract. Progress reinforces commitment. So if the coalition and its leadership can continue generating meaningful results, other things may become easier, regardless of whether the coalition chooses to grow, contract, or move in a different direction.

Organizational continuity. A second key element is developing the routines, structures, relationships, and shared expectations that make the coalition a dependable part of community life. Members understand how meetings work, how decisions are made, how responsibilities are assigned, when leadership changes occur, and how action plans are developed and reviewed. The larger community knows what the coalition does and how to engage with it.

Developing this kind of continuity takes committed leadership and effective coalition structures. Members need clear expectations about participation, responsibilities, decision-making, and planning. These structures do not have to be rigid or identical in every coalition, but when they are used consistently, they help the organization develop stability and deeper roots in the community.

Positive spirit. Good work and sound structure are two essential elements in maintaining any coalition. But finally, what you also want to maintain are good relationships - the positive spirit that brought people together and kept them coming together in the first place. Trust, cohesion, connection, and mutual respect are hard to overestimate. We spend our personal time where we feel comfortable, accepted, and valued for who we are. Coalition members are not likely to feel or act very differently.

After the coalition is established, it may choose among many different maintenance options. The key point here, and a key point about coalition maintenance, is that there are genuine choices; it's best to choose consciously. You can maintain the momentum of your coalition, speed it up, slow it down, narrow its focus, expand it, or change direction. You can make these decisions based on your mission, your members, and community needs rather than simply allowing outside pressures to determine the coalition's future.

The choices you make will depend upon your particular coalition's history, personality, assets, community needs, environmental factors, and available time. Many choices are justifiable, and different choices may be appropriate at different points in a coalition's life. Your best choice today might not be your best choice tomorrow - which is part of what makes community work exhilarating, challenging, and fun. Maintaining or changing the coalition is an ongoing process of listening, assessment, and decision-making.

If your coalition is doing good work, it will probably choose to sustain it, in one form or another. Continued accomplishment, dependable structures, strong relationships, and vibrant spirit will help you maintain your efforts and your successes. These coalition needs are interrelated, and they are continuous; they never completely go away. Effective coalition leadership recognizes these realities and helps the group navigate change thoughtfully, flexibly, and with a clear sense of purpose.

"Coalition building is a very lengthy process, and it's one that doesn't always go smoothly or according to anybody's pre-established time line. People in coalitions need to remember that, and to accept that, and not be disappointed that things don't go as quickly as they want to. As each new member comes in, it changes the whole dynamic and the whole focus, and that's part of it. It's constantly evolving. The coalition never has an end in sight, not unless you want to disband it. It just doesn't have an end. It constantly changes. You just have to keep going and plugging away. That's just the nature of it...."
 

___You understand that maintenance of a coalition and other social partnerships is as important as physical-world maintenance for optimal functioning.

___You have made a decision to engage in maintenance, considering the various parts of the coalition that need attention:

• The coalition's reason for being-its vision, mission and objectives
• The basic governance and operating rules of the coalition
• The coalition leadership
• The coalition membership
• The division of labor, within and among the leaders and members
• The coalition's strategic and action plans, both short-and longer-term
• The coalition's actions and results, so that it is accomplishing something (what it means to) in the world
• The coalition's funding, so that those accomplishments can be continued
• The coalition's visibility in the larger community
• The coalition's public support
• The spirit of the coalition

___ You have designed a maintenance plan, deciding:

• who should design the plan (or multiple plans if appropriate)
• how comprehensive the plan should be
• how formal the plan should be
• who should carry out the plan
• how frequently maintenance should take place

___ You carry out your maintenance plan, including external or internal review. Internal review may be formal or informal.

___ You consider and choose, if appropriate, alternatives to maintaining the coalition

• Growing
• Spinning off
• Changing focus
• Cutting back
• Ending
• Staying the way you are

Example 1: Maintaining a coalition by cultivating and nurturing relationships

Background.

The North Quabbin Community Coalition had a successful first year, but it was clear that its maintenance required staffing. Tom Wolff, the outside facilitator who functioned as coordinator, was paid for only eight hours a week of service to the Coalition, and that barely allowed him enough time to keep abreast of what was going on.

In the Coalition's second year, Tom found a grant to hire Barbara Corey as a 20-hour-a-week coordinator. Barbara was a long-time resident of Petersham, one of the nine towns comprising the North Quabbin region, the area the Coalition served. She thus had local credentials and credibility, familiarity with the region and its issues, and a large circle of friends and acquaintances. She stayed in the position for more than ten years, becoming full-time in the fourth.

Starting with a desk at the Chamber of Commerce, Barbara soon found office space at the YMCA in Athol, the largest of the nine towns. The Athol Y is a true community center, located in the middle of downtown, and affordable enough to be used by nearly everyone in the region. It is packed from 6:00 in the morning to 9:00 or 10:00 in the evening with everyone from babies to seniors, participating in day care, individual work-outs, exercise classes, after-school programs, sports, meetings, and special events. Because Barbara was now so accessible to everyone in the North Quabbin community, she was constantly sought out, by phone and in person, by Coalition members and others who had concerns or ideas about the issues in the area. "The office at the Y really made us part of the community," Barbara says.

Maintaining the coalition.

From her first day on the job, Barbara also did what she describes as the "nitty gritty work" of maintaining the Coalition. She went to every meeting of every task force, and acted as staff for them all. She took and distributed minutes, got out meeting notices, called people to make sure they would be at meetings, reminded them of what they had said they would do, and kept reminding them until they did it. She published a monthly newsletter, and wrote profiles of agencies for a regular column in the local paper. She represented the Coalition at community meetings, at legislative hearings, and in discussions with local officials. "I was the face of the Coalition in the area," Barbara recalls.

From the beginning, however, Barbara was more than just a presence. In addition to what she was actually doing, she understood what the members of the Coalition needed most. "They needed a safe place to share ideas, and we were not threatening to them. We weren't trying to become another agency and compete for their funding. So they could come to the Coalition and feel comfortable. They [the local agencies] knew that if they were to do their job, they had to do it collectively and collaboratively because the needs of the people they all served were so intertwined. The Coalition gave them a safe place to collaborate."

Barbara cultivated that comfort. For years, she brought flowers and food to set on a table before Coalition meetings. "I knew some people were coming from a good distance, and the meetings were early in the day, so I thought they might need breakfast." Barbara brought coffee and tea, juice, fruit, and home-baked muffins to Coalition meetings, creating a relaxed atmosphere where people felt they were among friends. It's much easier to think about collaborating with someone you have breakfast with than with someone you don't know.

One of the initial problems that the Coalition had to face was that so few agencies worked together, or knew of the work, or even the existence, of others. A major step in fostering the Coalition's work was to link them, and to make sure that their directors and staffs made personal connections. One of Barbara's great talents was as a broker of introductions. She was constantly bringing people together, saying "You two should know each other. You have a lot in common." Many enduring collaborations and partnerships among agencies started with one of Barbara's introductions before or after a Coalition meeting, or, just as often, on the street or at a community event.

Barbara also made sure that task forces, once formed, actually did their jobs - that they met, strategized, formulated action plans and carried them out. She provided task force members with information, reminders, and enough good-natured nagging to make their jobs as easy as possible. And she continually held out the goals of the Coalition in general and of the task forces in particular, so that people would remember why they were doing this in the first place. Those are all important elements of maintaining a Coalition's membership and momentum.

People-centered maintenance.

While she was extremely well organized, Barbara didn't have a formal plan for Coalition maintenance. "I relied on people. I knew who the people were that I could count on, and I asked for their help. I needed it! I never had any trouble asking people for help, and they always came through, because I knew who I could count on."

In this sense, Barbara herself was the Coalition's plan for maintenance. The group's members realized the need for a dedicated coordinator, and Barbara defined and created the position over the years. The Coalition's members placed their trust in her skills, understanding of the mission, and commitment to the shared purpose.

There are any number of ways to maintain a coalition, and different ways to go about each of them. Barbara's way was to focus on the people involved. She oversaw mechanisms to accomplish the goals of the Coalition; the Steering Committee, which functioned as the Coalition's governing body (and which remained open to anyone who cared to join) provided a sounding board for what was possible. The direction of the Coalition, for instance, was set by three criteria:

• Need: How great was the need in the community, and how accurate was the perception of that need among agencies and others?
• Feasibility: Could something substantive be accomplished, or was the job too big, or too multi-faceted, or too political for the Coalition to tackle right now?
• Resources: Was there enough money, time, etc. to have an effect?

While sometimes - as in the cases of child sexual assault and domestic violence - the need was so compelling that it outweighed the other considerations, usually these three criteria together determined the issues that the Coalition would address.

To address those issues, however, Barbara relied not on mechanisms, but on relationships. "I knew who the people were who had that belief in the community. None of them were one-issue - just a core of people who cared about the community, were competent, knew a lot of people themselves, and who could follow through and get things done. And I'd ask them, and they would do it."

Barbara cultivated relationships. She attended meetings of the Clergy association regularly, for instance, and enlisted several of the local clergy in Coalition projects. One persuaded his parishioners to start a food bank, and, later, an AIDS support center in their church. Another convinced his congregation to turn the basement of their parish house into a homeless shelter in the winter months.

"A lot of maintaining things was in my choice of people to ask to chair committees or task forces, or to start the wheels turning for a particular project. I knew who I could count on, and whose support would be important in order for something to succeed." By carefully choosing those best suited to the task, Barbara made sure that efforts and momentum were sustained.

The magic of relationships and recognition as maintenance tools.

As a result of her focus on relationships and people, Barbara's conscious maintenance activities centered around keeping people feeling connected and appreciated. She kept a store of plain postcards in her desk, and whenever she had a spare moment - even when she was on hold on a phone call - she'd dash off a note to a Coalition member, saying, "Thanks for your hard work," or "I really enjoyed our meeting the other day." She was on the phone constantly, asking, cajoling, bolstering, supporting, and - most of all -thanking people.

"I never thought of maintenance as a precise item. We had the newsletter, we had our monthly meetings, we had the annual meeting, where you could recognize people for what they did. I just thought that was so important. These people needed to hear that someone noticed what they were doing - everyone needs that. Everyone likes to get thanked. And it has repercussions - it fosters others' productivity.

"What we're talking about is people. It's such a personal - such an emotional thing. You can't do this work unless you feel there's something special about people. And that has spillover - when you see someone else's enthusiasm, you get inspired. So I tried to let people know they were needed. They respond to that."

Barbara's own enthusiasm - she characteristically speaks in sentences that end with exclamation points - inspired many. It was difficult to resist her energy...and difficult not to believe that whatever she was suggesting was not only possible, but overwhelmingly worth doing.

Although Barbara and the other coalition members did not establish a formal plan for maintenance, they practiced maintenance regularly through restatement of the mission, goal-setting, communication among members and with the community, follow-up, and constant reevaluation of the Coalition's goals and direction. This "upkeep" took place in a context that put people and relationships at the core of the whole idea of coalition.

Since Barbara loved the annual meetings where people were recognized for their hard work, it's fitting to end with a description of the similar luncheon that was held for Barbara when she retired as Coalition coordinator. It took place in the large room at the YMCA where she had convened so many Coalition meetings on so many Friday mornings. Person after person rose with testimony to her hard work and effectiveness. But, more to the point, most of them made reference to a post card she had written or a phone call she had made to them. (Barbara's phone calls were so numerous and recognizable that one of the running themes of the luncheon was the interruption of the proceedings by one or another of her close associates bursting in with an impression of her on the phone.)

If it had not been clear beforehand, it was certainly clear by the end of the luncheon that Barbara's enduring legacy had been in her understanding of the human elements of the Coalition. She had helped to create and sustain the safe haven that people needed to air their concerns and discuss the important and difficult issues in the community. She had carefully assessed the skills and abilities of particular people and persuaded them to take on exactly the tasks they could accomplish better than anyone else available, and thus assured that Coalition actions were appropriate and successful. And she had forged a web of relationships, with herself at the hub, that served to maintain the mission and the momentum and the spirit of the Coalition.

Example 2: Summary report - PATCH Core Committee Assessment Meeting

Summary Report
PATCH Core Committee Assessment Meeting

Mark Edgar, MPH
Senior Research Associate
Heartland Centers for Public Health
St. Louis University School of Public Health

The members of the PATCH Core Committee met to discuss issues related to the functioning of the coalition and future directions. The members completed three activities in the meeting: 1) Group discussion of issues; 2) Completion of a survey regarding possible activities for the future; 3) completion of a survey designed to evaluate the "health" of the coalition. Following is a brief summary of the results of those activities.

I. Group Discussion
The following list of issues is comprised of items raised in a previous meeting and additional items added during the group discussion. Following the group discussion, committee members were asked to cast votes for the items they felt were most relevant to the work of the PATCH committee in the coming year. Each member had 5 votes and could distribute them across items in any manner. Issues are listed in the order of the final vote count.

The first two items above could be addressed through a strategic planning process that would result in a specific program or action plan that would include evaluation measures. By endorsing item 3, members seem to be suggesting that a positive approach should be the "overarching" theme of all activities undertaken by PATCH. While this type of philosophical shift is very subtle, support and training for Core Committee and sub-committee members could help facilitate such a shift. In addition, tasking each subcommittee (and the Core Committee) with exploring the possibilities for positive approaches in every effort or intervention could institutionalize this method. The fourth item may best be addressed through the strategic planning process mentioned above and in conjunction with item 6.

The expansion of participation in subcommittees by persons other than Core Committee members could enhance the efforts of the group in general. The fifth item, expanded funding, seemed to deal with the idea of pursuing funding specifically for the functioning of PATCH as an entity in addition to funding for various intervention efforts. This is in concordance with other discussions that concerned making a "meta-leap" that would position PATCH with increased funding, influence, activity and responsibility in the community. Ideas related to this issue, raised during the meeting, included pursuit of a Network grant from the Office of Rural Health Policy and the coordination of a "Summit on Health" type conference.

II. Possible Activities
The committee members completed a survey entitled Possible Activities/Focus Areas for the Coalition in the Near Future. The items were adapted from the Community Toolbox. Members assigned a score to each item according to the following scale: 1 to 5 with 1 meaning Not Important and 5 meaning Very Important. Table 1 provides the descriptive statistics from the survey. Items are displayed in descending order of the mean score. The results show that committee members endorse items related to planning, evaluation, obtaining feedback and creating objectives, reinforcing the results from the discussion of issues above.

III. Health of the Coalition
The committee members completed a survey entitled Diagnosing the Health of Your Coalition adapted from the Community Tool Box. The survey was comprised of 10 areas each with 5 associated items that could be rated on the following scale: 1 to 5 with 1 meaning Weak or Never and 5 meaning Strong or Always. The authors suggest the results of the survey be evaluated on the following scale

• 5-15: Watch out! You may need an overhaul in this area.
• 15-20: Checkup time! It's time for tune up to get everything in good working order.
• 20-25: Congratulations! You're running smoothly and all systems are go. Keep up the good work.

The results displayed in Table 2 and Figure 1 suggests that the "health" of the coalition is relatively low based on the scale provided by the authors of the survey. The results are similar to those obtained in the group discussion and the Possible Activities survey with the item related to planning and evaluation showing the second lowest score and the item relating to how well the coalition meets needs showing the lowest score.

Example 3: rebuilding a collapsed coalition through transparency, trust, and member-driven redesign

The Collective Impact Forum’s 100th podcast episode explores how a major regional coalition focused on climate resilience and equity (Together Bay Area) rebuilt itself after a near-total collapse. Executive Director Annie Burke shares the story of how the coalition, originally founded in 1990 as the Bay Area Open Space Council, fell apart in 2018 due to unclear purpose, poor governance, financial instability, and loss of trust. Instead of shutting down, key leaders chose to rebuild.
In 2019, more than 200 people participated in a redesign process that emphasized:
- Rebuilding trust through full transparency, including regular updates, open financial information, and honest conversations about past harms. 
- Inclusive leadership intentionally elevating women and people of color into decision-making roles and ensuring that historically marginalized voices shape the new direction.
- Following members’ energy, designing programs only when members demonstrated real need and interest, rather than relying on legacy initiatives. 
- Aligning mission, values, governance, and finances, ensuring that the coalition’s structure and business model actually supported its purpose and workload.

The redesigned coalition relaunched as Together Bay Area, now an alliance of roughly 80 organizations focused on climate resilience. Its financial model is sustainable with about 80% of revenue coming from membership dues and an annual conference, and the remaining 20% from grants.

Since rebuilding, Together Bay Area has demonstrated what a stable and trust-centered coalition can accomplish:
- A fully sold-out annual conference that strengthens relationships, accelerates collaboration, and reinforces the coalition’s shared identity. 
- Major policy wins, including playing a significant role in helping pass Proposition 4, a $10 billion climate bond. 
- Launching the Rights Relations initiative, which is reshaping how member organizations work with tribes and Native-led organizations, centering cultural respect and long-term relationship building. 
- A solid governance model with clear decision-making processes.

The episode shows how coalitions can undergo a form of “creative destruction”, shedding dysfunctional structures and emerging stronger.
 

TOOL 1: COALITION ASSET MAPPING TOOL

Asset mapping is a collaborative exercise that helps you create a “map” of the resources available within your coalition.  Resources can include political power among coalition members, connections to key stakeholder groups or programs that provide culturally competent services. Resources can also include organizational assets (e.g. meeting space for events) and individual knowledge and skills (e.g. grantwriting skills). Asset mapping can also help identify needs. Download this tool, created by Impact Center for Evaluation and Research, to assist your coalition in asset mapping.

Tool 2: Diagnosing the Health of Your Coalition

Developed by Gillian Kaye, President, Community Development Consultants, Brooklyn, New York.

The maintenance checklist below outlines principles to improve the work of your coalition. It is comprehensive, easy to use, and should give you a good overview of where your coalition stands. (Word Document)

There are many ways you can use this maintenance checklist, but to get the most value from it, you might consider following the steps below:

• Take a brief look at the checklist, to see if it seems right for you and your coalition.
• If you think it does, take the time to respond to the checklist items. Respond to each item thoughtfully, and tally up the scores. This should take no more than 15-20 minutes.
• Consider giving the checklist to other leaders, and perhaps other members, of your coalition. Generally speaking, the more the better; get them involved in the maintenance process.
• Summarize and communicate the results.
• Present the results in a meeting of the coalition, allowing sufficient time for discussion.
• If needed, form a group to make recommendations based upon the results.
• Vote upon the recommendations offered.
• Follow up to ensure that the adopted changes are implemented in actual practice.
• Review and possibly re-administer this checklist on a regular basis, perhaps once a year. Ask yourself: Have the adopted changes been carried out? How do this year's scores compare to the ones before? Is the coalition moving in the right direction?

To carry out these steps will take some effort, that is true. But it will mean taking maintenance seriously, the way it should be taken. More to the point: We believe the time invested in maintenance procedures such as this will be a sound investment, one that will pay off well in improving the long-run effectiveness of your coalition.

Diagnosing the Health of Your Coalition

Using the scale below, rate each component of your organization, then tally your score on the worksheet provided at the end.

1. The clarity of your coalition's vision, mission and goals.

___ A. Your coalition's vision (your dream) and mission (what you are going to do) take into account what is happening in the community.
___ B. Your vision, mission and goals are written down.
___ C. Residents and institutions are aware of your coalition's vision, mission and goals.
___ D. Your coalition periodically re-evaluates and updates its vision, mission and goals.
___ E. Your coalition's activities are evaluated in relation to its vision, mission and goals.

2. The effectiveness of your coalition structure.

___ A. Your coalition has a regular meeting cycle that members can count on.
___ B. Your coalition has active committees.
___ C. All of your members have copies of the bylaws.
___ D. Your executive board and committees communicate regularly.
___ E. Your executive board meets on a regular basis with good attendance.

3. The effectiveness of your outreach and communication.

___ A. Your coalition has a newsletter or another method of communication that keeps the community updated regularly and informed about your activities.
___ B. You use a survey or other method to collect information about members' interests, needs and concerns.
___ C. You always publish survey results and use them to guide your coalition's projects.
___ D. The survey is conducted every year or so because the community and residents change.
___ E. Your coalition "goes to where members are" to do outreach, including where people live, shop, and work.

4. The effectiveness of coalition meetings

___ A. Members feel free to speak at a meeting without fear of being confronted for their views.
___ B. Your coalition advertises its meeting with sufficient notice by sending out agendas and fliers in advance.
___ C. You provide childcare and translation when needed.
___ D. You accomplish the meeting's agenda in meetings that start and end and on time.
___ E. You hold meetings in central accessible, and comfortable places and at convenient times for all members.

5. Opportunities for member responsibility and growth

___ A. Your coalition makes a conscious effort to develop new leaders.
___ B. You offer training and support to new and experienced leaders, either through your coalition or through outside agencies.
___ C. Your "buddy system" matches less experienced members with leaders to help the former learn jobs and make contacts.
___ D. You give committees serious work to do.
___ E. Leadership responsibilities are shared; for example, you rotate the chairing of a meeting between members.

6. The coalition's effectiveness at planning, implementing and evaluating projects

___ A. At the beginning of each new year your coalition develops a plan that includes goals and activities to accomplish during the year.
___ B. These plans are based at least in part on information collected from member surveys.
___ C. After each activity or project, the leadership or the committee evaluates how it went in order to learn from the experience.
___ D. Your coalition always organizes visible projects that make a difference to members.
___ E. When you undertake projects, you develop action plans that identify tasks, who will do them, and by what target dates.

7. Your coalition's use of research and/or external resources

___ A. Your coalition works with other coalition in the community on common issues, and with city-wide organizations that address critical community concerns.
___ B. Your coalition utilizes the resources and information of other organizations that can help the community, such as training workshops.
___ C. Your coalition keeps abreast of issues affecting communities across the city and state.
___ D. Outside speakers come to meetings to address topics of interest to members.
___ E. When your coalition wants to work on an issue, leaders know here to go to get necessary information such as statistics, forms, and so forth.

8. The coalition's sense of community

___ A. Your coalition builds social time into meetings so that people can talk informally and build a sense of community.
___ B. You plan social activities.
___ C. Everyone in your organization is treated equally.
___ D. You recognize and reward all member contributions, large or small.
___ E. You make all residents welcome in the coalition regardless of income, race, gender, age or education level.

9. How well the coalition meets needs and provides benefits

___ A. You make resource lists and important contacts available to members on a regular basis.
___ B. You hold workshops with experts who can provide specific services to members.
___ C. Your coalition helps members out with issues of individual need.
___ D. If a member survey indicates that personal issues (such as child care or landlord-tenant problems) are interfering with member involvement, your coalition responds to those issues.
___ E. Your coalition holds meetings and workshops in which residents can meet elected officials and city service personnel to voice their opinions and learn about resources and programs in the community.

10. Your coalition's relationship with elected officials, institutional leaders and other power players

___ A. Coalition leaders know how to negotiate successfully with elected officials and institutional leaders about member concerns.
___ B. Your coalition has one or more regular representatives who attend important community meetings.
___ C. Coalition leaders and members understand the lines of authority, decision-making power, responsibility, and other aspects of the community power structure.
___ D. Your coalition meets with officials on a regular basis about the issues that concern members.
___ E. Your coalition participates in city-wide activities and demonstrates focus on community issues.

Coalition Evaluation Score Sheet

Fill out this score sheet using the total numbers from each section of the organizational diagnosis.

Section                                                               Total Score:

• Vision, mission and goals                              ________
• Coalition structure                                         ________
• Outreach and communication                       ________
• Coalition meetings                                        ________
• Member responsibility and growth               ________
• Projects                                                          ________
• Research and external resources                 ________
• Sense of community                                     ________
• Needs and benefits                                       ________
• Relation with power players                         ________

For each section, follow the guidelines below:

If you scored between:

5-15 Watch out! You may need an overhaul in this area.

15-20 Checkup time! It's time for tune up to get everything in good working order.

20-25 Congratulations! You're running smoothly and all systems are go. Keep up the good work.

TOOL 3: COALITION PLANNING TIMELINE

Download this tool to assist your planning at-a-glance: major tasks, strategies, grants and reporting, and community events to keep track of for the upcoming year. This tool will help you plan for and keep track of high-level priorities.

TOOL 4: COALITION EMPOWERMENT SELF-ASSESSMENT TOOL

This tool from Tom Wolff & Associates was originally published in Wolff and Kaye, From the Ground Up: A Workbook on Coalition Building and Community Development.

A PowerPoint presentation summarizing the major points in the section.