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Question:
I am looking for a sample community accountability contract that elected officials/candidates could be required to support/sign concerning issues affecting my community before supporting an elected official.
Answer:

Hi Vanessa,
 
Welcome to the Community Tool Box (CTB) and Ask an Advisor, hopefully we'll be able to provide you with timely, directly applicable, and useful information related to community accountability contracts. Very interesting question and one I have yet to encounter in my time as an advisor so I'm looking forward to seeing what I can find for you; I'm sure it will be of great interest to others who visit the CTB, especially during this election cycle - timely indeed Vanessa, timely indeed!
 
 
Well, my default resource for answering queries is, you guessed it, the CTB. The main issue we're discussing is accountability so I checked to see what resources we have about accountability and here's the path that will get you there: on our home page click on the "Learn A Skill" button, click on the "Table of Contents" and scroll down to the section entitled "Organizing for Effective Advocacy." Next, click on "Chapter 31 - Conducting Advocacy Research" and then "Section 5 - Requesting Accountability." This section is a must read to get you thinking about the myriad ways to hold people accountable. After you've read this, check out Chapter 9, Section 9 which provides information about writing contracts. Again, go to our home page and click on the "Learn A Skill" button, click on the "Table of Contents" and scroll down to the section entitled "Developing a Strategic Plan and Organizational Structure." Click on "Chapter 9 - Developing an Organizational Structure for the Initiative," click on "Section 9 - Understanding and Writing Contracts and Memoranda of Agreement," specifically the section entitled "How do you draft a contract or memorandum of agreement?" To quote directly from the CTB: "We've looked at what you need to know about contracts and memoranda of agreement if you're the contractor or if you're signing on. What if you're the funder or employer, or if you're the organization asking others to enter into a memorandum of agreement? In those cases, you'll need to know how to draft the document, and to make sure that it says exactly what you want it to." So, this CTB resource is a primer for you in how to draft your own contract if we can't find a suitable example. Sometimes, the CTB provides a resource that you can immediately put to use as is, sometimes, as in your question, you might have to provide a little of your own sweat equity to adapt our resource to your purposes.
 
 
My other resource for answering questions, especially for those with which I have only a passing familiarity or the CTB doesn't offer the requisite resource is, correct again, Google (where would we be without Google I ask you?). So, I put in as the search terms "community accountability contract" and "community accountability contract for elected officials;" low and behold, multiple hits - fantastic. I digress. Here are the links that I think might prove informative (it depends on what you're looking for therein). As you probably already found out from your own search there is a lot of information about government accountability and government accountability contracts, but few about contracts between the people and their elected officials/candidates.
 
 
https://umabroad.umn.edu/assets/files/PDFs/educators/Sample%20Accountabi...http://www.fukuoka.unhabitat.org/docs/publications/pdf/peoples_process/C...http://www.michiganfreedomfund.com/lansing_needs_a_contract_for_accounta...
 
 
In sum Vanessa, if none of the links provides you with the concrete example you're looking for (not as easy to locate as I thought - mea culpa) you may just have to write your own (hence the CTB resources provided above). Having an understanding of accountability in general and knowing how to write a contract should get you where you want to go; believe me when I tell you that I think it's a great idea to get elected officials and candidates to sign such an agreement. To be clear, any accountability contract so written and proffered for signature won't be legally binding, but at the very least it can be used to call out an official if there is a discrepancy between "what I pledged" and "what I actually did." With that Vanessa, thank you for your most interesting and challenging question. If what we offered in reply is unsatisfactory please visit us again and we'll work together to come up with a more suitable answer. Be well, take care, and do good work!
 
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Question Date: lun, 05/23/2016