Ask an Advisor Answers

HI Kayla,
I appreciate your questions and service to your community! What wonderful resources you are offering. Here is a chapter you may find helpful with some additional resources embedded in the resource: Chapter 2. Other Models for Promoting Community Health and Development | Section 17. Addressing Social Determinants of Health in Your Community | Main Section | Community Tool Box (ku.edu). This is from our Community tool box. Additionally, I would recommend looking at the CDC's research on Social determinants of health: Social Determinants of Health | CDC
I also came across this resource on the American Academy of family physicians web page which has 3 suggested tools for addressing social determinants of health. Three tools for screening for social determinants of health (aafp.org) However, they may not be what you are looking for in terms of research, but might help.
In Community,
Ask an Advisor 2021

Hello Arnold,
Thanks for your questions. I apologize for my slow response. I believe that you may find this example helpful on the toolbox: Summer Enrichment Program | Community Tool Box (ku.edu)
In Community,
Ask an Advisor
Fall 2021

Dear Molla,
Thanks for your question and dedication to community work. I am thrilled that you are applying community psychology principles in Ethiopia. As you are considering how to use and/or link the Community Tool Box to your agency, here are the guidelines: The CTB  has a Use Policy governing such situations, which you can find at https://ctb.ku.edu/en/use-policy.  
In Community,
Ask An Advisor 2021

Thank you for your question, but it is not clear to us what you mean by “catchment area” in your question. 
If you can provide some more details about your situation and what you are looking for, we might be able to advise you.

Thank you for writing to us with your question.  And it is a very big one!
In starting most any organization, or group, or even many individual activities, we believe the best place to start is with your goals – that is, what do you want to accomplish, first in general terms, and then specifically?   That comes first. It may take some reflection before you decide, but that is natural, and it is positive.
Then you might ask yourself what you need to do to get to your  goal.  In other words, you’d most likely want some kind of organizational plan, meaning the actual action steps that you’ll need to take to reach your goal.  It often helps to write these down specifically, in sequential order. Even better, can you attach rough timelines to each step, and assign responsibilities for who will do what?
 All this preliminary work may take some time, but it will be time well spent.  There’s much more to add of course, and the details will vary with each organization  (e.g., what kind of resources are available to you?). But these are the basics.
In addition, many sections  in the Community Tool Box should help you learn more, and provide more ideas you can use. In particular, we’d recommend  the different sections in Chapter 9, on organizational structure, especially Chapter 9, Section 1.   Many of the sections in Chapter 8, on planning, should also be especially useful in your case.
We hope this much may be helpful to you.  Thank you again for writing, and all best wishes for success as your important work continues.

            We are very glad you want to learn more about community development work and also to help your people and your communities. There is a lifetime of learning ahead of you, and the potential for you to do some wonderful things.
            How best to learn?  There are multiple ways. You can learn about community development from reading any of a variety of print sources; or by taking courses (which could also be part of a degree program); or by talking with people who have actual community development experience; or by gaining that experience yourself.  All these ways are important and valid.
            And you can also learn online.  Here, we do think the Community Tool Box, which is online, may have much to teach you.
            How can you best use it?  There are no fixed rules.  You could start, though, by looking at https://ctb.ku.edu/en/using-tool-box, which is a general description of how to use the Tool Box.  After that, it might be useful for you to skim through the Tool Box table of contents and the various Tool Box features to see what is available to you. Then you can go back and study more carefully those sections that seem most relevant to you, and learn a little more each day. 
            Another idea: It’s sometimes helpful to read materials in the order in which you would use them.  That is, you might start by reading about community needs, since many community actions are designed to meet those needs. You could then read about planning to meet those needs, adapting what you learn to your particular situation. 
             After planning, what often comes next in community work is bringing people together to work with you, commonly followed by deciding upon what actions to take, publicizing what you do, attracting more members and supporters, and evaluating your work. The Tool Box contains sections on all those topics – you’ll find them in the Table of Contents. You could therefore read Tool Box materials in that approximate order.
            What’s above are just examples, and only some of the many ways you could proceed.  To summarize, though, if you can plan in advance how you’d like to go about your own learning, carry out your plan steadily, and learn a little bit each day, you will soon be rewarded, and others will come to gain from your knowledge.
            We hope these thoughts will be helpful to you. And we wish you every success as you pursue your important work.

            Thank you for writing to us with your question.  We hesitate to provide a definitive response, since your best response will be shaped by local conditions particular to your survey.  But we can offer some general observations that we hope might be helpful for you.
              Ideally, we think you’d want a survey that everyone will feel good about and get behind – both parents, youth, and your agency – and that will also be used  in actual practice to create better outcomes for your target group.  You don’t want it to be a dust collector!
            This suggests the value of outreach and discussion with all stakeholders before the survey actually begins, regarding survey purposes, specific content, and methods of administration. All of this should of course be as open, transparent, and responsive to input as possible. (It should actively solicit input as well.)  We realize that while this may be conceptually easy, it can practically be more challenging.  
             Beyond that, since we are not familiar with your particular situation on the ground, we think it will help to consult with those who are, or who have more specific expertise in this area than we do.
             More specifically, this would include your local IRB, whose general guidance could be useful to you, even though you state that IRB approval would not be necessary in your case (and we would double-check that assertion).
            Regarding the legalities of consent, which might be governed by state or local laws or regulations, do you or your nonprofit have access to legal counsel?
            And can you search for similar surveys that have been done with similar target groups, either inside or outside your area, and learn how they have dealt with the challenges you describe?
            By taking these factors into account and resolving them as best you can, your survey will be more likely to make a positive difference in your community. We hope so.  And we wish you great success as your work proceeds.  
 

 
           Thank you for writing to us with your question.  We think it’s a natural and not surprising question, as it can easily occur in any organization, especially in a relatively new one, if your charter school fits that description.  The good news is that your issue is certainly solvable, through open and transparent and honest dialogue among those who are part of your shared leadership model.
          The basic problem-solving process here is quite simple, at least in theory.  Can you think of a basic matrix, with a listing of key decisions that need to be made as one axis, and the people who should make them on the other?    The basic logical task is to fill in the matrix, or chart, until you have a rough consensus, assuming that shared leadership model.  You’d want to keep in mind that it may take more than one discussion session to achieve this.  But that is to be expected when you are still developing an organizational structure for the school.In this sense, the answer to your question is found in the question itself.
         There are also several variations that might make your process more effective:  
        * You could distribute your chart in advance, and invite each staff member to fill in the cells in the matrix with their own viewpoint. Those comments could be made public, though still anonymous.  You could do this online through interactive digital whiteboards such as Jamboard or Miro.      
         *  You could hold your discussion sessions in the form of a retreat,  such as a planned weekend retreat in a pleasant and neutral location, when people have an extended time to work these issues through.   
         * If needed, you could bring in an outside consultant, not necessarily to give advice, but rather to facilitate the process.  
         *  You could Look at other charter school structures (do you belong to an organization of charter schools?), and borrow or adapt features of those features that you think would work well in your own setting.
            We hope this much may be helpful to you. We cannot provide a full response in a few short paragraphs, but we hope what’s here may give you some ideas that you can develop and begin to implement where you are.  Thanks again for writing, and all best wishes as your important work continues.

 
          We have no doubt that faith-based communities have played a significant role in community transformation, and that there are many opportunities for that role to expand further.  And we are sure that a book (or many books) could be written about it.
         But to give you a start toward clarifying your own answer, we can point you to two sources: One is a short bibliography on faith-based resources for action, published by the Asset Building Community Development Institute at DePaul University, at https://resources.depaul.edu/abcd-institute/resources/Pages/Faith-based-Resources.aspx.   The other is a report from the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California, at https://crcc.usc.edu/report/community-transformation-outlining-a-process-for-change/.
       We hope these sources may help further develop your own thinking and action. All best wishes as your efforts continue.

Thank you for being in touch with us.  If you mean “How do you determine your community’s issues?”, we suggest you might consult Chapter 3 in the Community Tool Box, “Assessing Community Needs and Resources,” and the various sections within that chapter. Check the Community Tool Box table of contents on our home page for details
As for how you can then address those issues, we would recommend looking at the different sections within Tool Box Chapter 19, “Choosing and Planning Community Interventions”  in particular, though many other Tool Box chapters and sections also speak to this topic.  
Best wishes for success in finding and using what you need.

Thank you for writing us with your interesting and important question. We can offer some suggestions for your consideration, which may seem indirect at first, but which we think address the broader issue of getting good feedback – of course essential for a system like yours to achieve your goals.
One suggestion has to do with framing. Rather than give the impression that feedback is a task or chore, as something a parent has to add to one’s list,  can you present it a positive opportunity?   As in, for example, “Please help us work together with you, to improve education for your child, and also for all children at school in our district.”  You’d want to make giving feedback as a warm and special invitation, a happy thing to do.
Another suggestion has to do with branding, or phrasing.  When you talk about improving policies and procedures, we believe many parents’ eyes will glaze over.  They may think (perhaps not without reason) “This is not for me,” or “This stuff is beyond me,” or “I’m not interested in policies and procedures; I just want my child to get a good education.”
 So might you consider a different and more accessible phrasing, such as “Making our school work for you,” or “How we do things at our school,” or something along those lines?  Something that would draw parents in and make them feel like partners in their child’s education and with their school (which they should be in any case).  The idea is to make feedback seem simple, feasible, enjoyable, and, ideally, fun.
A third suggestion has to do with timing.   It’s fine to have both focus groups and surveys, but your feedback mailbox should be open 24/7 and advertised that way.  For example, “In our district, feedback is welcome,  encouraged, and valued anytime; and here’s how you can give it.”
You could also promote a more regular feedback opportunity –  let’s call it Feedback Monday – where on the first Monday of every week, as part of a short weekly bulletin that goes out to all parents,  you promote a specific opportunity for feedback on a particular topic selected in advance (often with parents doing the selecting). You ask for feedback on this topic in particular, then post and use the results. You keep it upbeat and positive, paying attention to colorful graphics to attract the eye and stimulate response.  You could certainly also combine this with larger parent assemblies a few times a year to talk about these issues in a group, in addition to smaller focus groups and surveys.
We think you may see where we are going with this.  To get the feedback we think you desire, you may want to go beyond traditional boundaries, and see yourself as true partners with parents, closely working together for mutually-held goals.
We don’t pretend that our comments provide a complete answer to your issue.  But we hope they indicate a general direction you could head in, and a general spirit you could build upon.  We think it’s possible to create a culture of feedback, and a sense of excitement to go with it.  Perhaps you can  do this!
In any case, we hope some of these thoughts may be helpful to you. Thanks again for writing, and all best wishes for success.

Thank you for writing to us. If we understand your question correctly, we can say this:
1. In conducting our Ask an Advisor service over the past 15+ years, and responding to nearly 2000 questions, it’s hard for us to say that any particular concerns are prevalent.  That’s because we hear from a very wide variety of community builders from all over the world, working in an equally wide variety of different community settings, and with an equally wide variety of concerns of their own.
 2.  All of them want to make their communities better and stronger, and that’s the common reason for their writing to us. But the particular circumstances they are in, and challenges they face are all different.  
3.  To address these concerns, we at the Community Tool Box attempt to provide some general information and ideas that will help community builders in their work.  We hope and believe they are helpful. 
      Of course, you can also learn a great deal from other programs in your studies in school, as well as from books, articles, and reports in the field, and other resources available to you. There’s no shortage of good information you can learn from and apply.
      These combined resources, together with experience you acquire in practice, will all help make you more effective in the community work you may be doing later in life.  We wish you great success in the work ahead of you.

 
Thank you for reaching out to us. Actually, we think you have already taken your first steps, by identifying and expressing your wish to create a shelter. That’s because without your intention, and your desire,  nothing else can happen!  
What comes next?  In your case, we think it would be a good idea for you to clarify what you have in mind. You can do this by simple reflection and by using your imagination. Can you visualize the shelter in action?  Try giving yourself an imaginary tour. You can certainly be creative, but be specific too.  This exercise may help you get clearer on just what it is you want.
Having done that, what would need to happen before your imagined (so far) shelter could operate?  For example, you would probably need a physical property – either purchased, donated, rented, leased, or shared.  There would be costs involved – what are they, and how much? You’d need staff. For facilities like shelters, approvals of different kinds are often involved, for zoning, health, utilities, and the like. And you’d also need to learn and comply with relevant state and local regulations.
 These are some of the likely factors you’d need to consider. They can be resolved, but it will almost certainly take some effort to resolve them. That’s just part of real-life community work.
 After that, it should also help you to learn about existing shelters similar to the one you now have in mind.  Then reach out to them, to learn more about how they operate and what advice they might have for you. The point here is to learn and be guided from others’ experience, both positive and negative.
 At around this point, it would be helpful as well to find a small group of others to work with you – unless you want to take on the entire project by yourself!  Working together with others will help take some of the load off of you, give you ideas you might not have thought of, allow others to contribute their particular strengths, provide practical and emotional support, and also help build relationships with others, which can be satisfying in their own right. That adds up to many advantages.
 There’s more involved of course, but we hope this will give you a start. In addition, some sections in the Community Tool Box may help you further, in particular the sections within Chapter 19, “Choosing and Planning Community Interventions.” Take a look if you can.
We hope this much has been helpful to you. If you follow through, we think you will find the work both engaging and challenging. And you may be able to help create something that is both beneficial to others and to your community. We hope so! We wish you every success as your work proceeds.

 
 
Thanks for writing to us at the Community Tool Box. We’re not surprised that you sometimes have challenges in reaching people, and we’re confident in saying that you are not alone!    Many of us live in busy worlds, with much information continually surging by, and it’s hard for even the most dedicated people to pay full attention to everything that’s going on.     
How, then, can you best ensure that your own message gets through? We’re not aware of any definitive study on the best way to connect with community partners or stakeholders. But based on our own experience, we can offer several suggestions that might help shape your own strategy.
The best strategy will depend on the person and the organization you are trying to reach, and also upon the local culture of your community in general. For some it might be an e-mail, for others a text, for others still a phone call.  The general principle here is knowing your audience, and adjusting your efforts to suit. If you’re not sure, you might ask someone else in your target organization, or some similar organization, “What’s the best way of reaching X?”
Sometimes it takes more than one contact to get through. Repetition can help, and persistence and tenaciousness can be virtues, up until the point where you simply become annoying – and there can be a fine line here.  When you do repeat your message, though, you could also vary the form of contact.
As for your actual message, you want to keep it short and clear. And vivid – how can you make it stand out from other messages, in a positive way?  And to emphasize the benefits for the recipient as well: Why is it in their interest to participate in your outreach activities?  (And when they do participate, a short thank you – positive reinforcement – is almost always a good idea.)
We hope these suggestions may be useful to you. With experience, you will continue to learn more  about how to adapt these principles  and find what works best in your own community setting. We wish you much success as your work continues.

 
 
Thank you for writing to us with your very thoughtful questions. While we are not experts in this particular field, to our best knowledge there is no official source that has been universally adopted on these points. The fact that you report working on your own in-house manual would itself seem to confirm this; accordingly, developing your own manual seems like a good idea.
Our own view is that several different policies regarding consensus decision making are justifiable, and one criterion for the “best” may be a policy that your group will agree to and use in practice.  In different words, whatever policies or guidelines you do adopt need to be both agreed to and followed by the members of your organization, over and above their particular content.  The same basic analysis would probably apply to vote-switching as well.
 One source that has impressed us and shaped our own thinking is Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making (3rd edition), by Sam Kaner et al.  The authors there point to different meanings of “abstain,” and different degrees of “consensus,” which they regard as different from “unanimity.” We found their chapter on “Striving for Unanimity,” toward the end of the book, to be especially thought-provoking and enlightening.
In addition, in your own work, once you have arrived at decision making policies, you might also decide to review them on an annual basis, to see if they are working as intended, and if any adjustments might need to be made.
Regarding training, we don’t usually do formal training\on consensus building, but you could write my colleagues at toolbox@ku.edu, mention that you wrote to Ask an Advisor, and see if they have any leads. Alternatively, you might  try to track down the authors of the Kaner book.
We hope this much may be helpful to you.  Thanks again for writing, and all best wishes as your important work continues.

 You will find an outline for evaluating policy initiatives in the Community Tool Box, Toolkit 12, Evaluating the Initiative, at https://ctb.ku.edu/en/evaluating-initiative.
There is also extensive information on evaluating policy change in Chapters 36-39 of the Community Tool Box (see the Tool Box Table of Contents for details).  
Best wishes in your search! 

For most everyday purposes, one could treat a ”plan for communication” and a “strategic plan” as essentially the same thing.

 
 
 
            Do you mean that (1) early educators and daycare service providers would be conducting some form of assessment about the community, or (2) that you and/or others would be conducting an assessment on early education and daycare services? 
             We suspect the latter; but in either case, it should help you to be clear on several basic questions before you begin:  Who in fact wants the assessment? What are the purposes of the assessment? What outcomes you would like to see as a result of the assessment? What resources you have to carry it out?  More specifically, who else is available to help you design the specific content, layout, and sampling format for the assessment, and also to conduct it in practice and analyze the results?  Finally, what would you like to do with the results you find?
            Once these questions are clarified, you may benefit from reviewing further information on developing a needs assessment in the different sections in Chapter 3 of the Community Tool Box, on community needs and resources.  A good place to start would be Section 1 in in that chapter, on developing a plan for assessment.
            We hope these thoughts may be helpful to you.  All best wishes in carrying out a successful and meaningful assessment.

    Thank you for letting us know about your work, 

Thank you for writing to us. A suggested generic format for citing Community Toolbox materials would be:
Community Tool Box  (n.d.).  Chapter  [insert number of chapter], Section [insert number of section],  [insert title of section, in italics].  Retrieved from https://ctb.ku.edu, [insert date of your retrieval]. 
To put this in the form of a specific example, if you were citing Chapter 4, Section 2 today (this section is chosen at random), your citation would look like:
Community Tool Box (n.d.). Chapter 4, Section 2, Communicating information about community health and development issues.  Retrieved from https://ctb.ku.edu, June 21, 2022.   
 (FYI, the “n.d.” in both cases above indicates that no date of publication was cited in the original source.)
  Additional style format guidance is given in the APA Publication Manual.
  We hope this is useful to you, and send best wishes for success in your work.
  
 

 
 
 Thank you for writing to us with your valuable question. There are techniques you can use in contacting an editor, and you can find some of them in different sections of the Community Tool Box.  We would especially recommend taking a look at Chapter 6, Section 6, on  Preparing Guest Columns and Editorials, and also at Chapter 33, Sections 1 and 2, on Writing letters to the Editor and Writing Letters to Elected Officials.  In addition, Chapter 6, Section 2, on Persuasion, provides some good general background.
You can find each of these sections by accessing the Tool Box Table of Contents.  To summarize them in a sentence, it will help if in your communication you are both friendly, clear, and specific in your request and in asking for a reply.  
  In addition, there are some other questions you would want to consider.  First, you want to be sure that you are communicating with the right editor.  If your target is a large publication, as you indicate, there are likely to be a number of editors.  Do you have the right one?
Once that has been established, what can you learn about that editor, so you can use that information in your communication?
Has the publication published reader-generated content similar to yours before?  If so, you can cite that precedent as well.
And how does that editor prefer to be contacted?  Is it by e-mail, as you suggest, or might it be by text, or phone call, or some other  way?  We probably don’t know yet until we inquire.   Publications and policies vary, and you want to know the procedures that apply to your publication.
A possible strategy for you here might be to first contact not the editor, but rather an editorial assistant, who works with the editor. Then you could describe your situation, and ask directly how best to contact the actual editor and send in your materials.  In other words, you can get helpful advice before you begin -- though this of course will take a little research.
 We hope some of these thoughts may be helpful to you. Thanks again for being in touch, and best wishes with your news story and your important cause.

As best we can determine, it was 1998.   Best wishes in your work. 

          Thanks for writing to us with your interesting and significant question. There’s no question in our minds that a program like this can turn out very well. To make this happen, here are some short-form thoughts that may help guide you:
          *   Planning for a program such as this really helps; so careful planning in advance, before you start, will be well worth it.
           *  Program success almost always depends on relationships – in your case, this would include strong relationships those who will be coordinating the program from the high school end.
           *  Likewise with the students themselves. Before you begin, you might visit the high school, meet with the students, ask them what they would like to see in a program like this (how should it be run?), and be guided by their reply. You might also consider designating one or more students who could help in program coordination.
           *   Clear, written, and well-communicated guidelines about program operations should be developed and agreed to in advance, so that everyone is clear up front on what the students can and cannot do.
           *   Can you think of some other possible benefits for the students, beyond the general satisfaction of service?   It’s usually safe to start with pizza.  Beyond that, what about something involving music, where for example one group plays for the other, or they all play together, or you bring in an outside performer?  Or video game nights. Here’s a chance for you to be creative.  In general, you could look for events and activities that are enjoyable, where students and residents can simply enjoy each other’s company as humans.   (There’s also the possible of asking the community residents what they might be able to give – for example, tutoring, coaching, or sharing of their special skills. Inter-generational collaborations are also possible. All of this could come later.)
           *  For new programs like this, it’s often helpful to start small, with a pilot effort. You can then evaluate (again, plan in advance how you’d like to do this), adjust as necessary, and build carefully and gradually.
          *  But perhaps the most important advice we have is to look for and draw upon the work of others who’ve done this before. You want to learn from them, through reading about their programs, but also through personal contact if at all possible.  How did they do it?  What issues did they face? What worked well, and what worked less well?  What were the main things to look out for? 
               In community work, there’s rarely something completely new under the sun; instead, we borrow from what others have done and adapt it to our own situation. And that’s perfectly okay; actually, it’s to be encouraged. In the long run, we get better. 
                Where can you find such models? We’re not in a place to do the research for you, but in your situation we might start with those involved in senior issues in your own town or city (e.g., the Council on Aging, Senior Corps, senior organizations, etc.). Ask around, ask for leads, and accompany this with a simple Google search. You could also contact national groups such as AARP.   And is there an association of independent communities such as yours?
           We hope some of these thoughts may be helpful to you. Thanks again for being in touch, and all best wishes for success as your work goes forward,
 
 

  Thank you for writing to us. A suggested format for citing Community Tool Box material in this case would be:
 
Community Toolbox (n.d.). Chapter 4, Section 2, Communicating information about community health and development issues.  Retrieved from https://ctb.ku.edu, [insert date of your retrieval] 
   (FYI, the “n.d.” above indicates that no date of publication was cited in the original source.)
 
  Additional style format guidance is given in the APA Publication Manual.   Best wishes as your studies continue.