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Topics: Community

Community Building, continued
Coming of Age

Index

Preface
Executive Summary
Chpt 1: Context & Convergence
Chpt 2: Themes of the New Community Building
Chpt 3: Supporting Broader Applications of Effective Community Building

Contents

Chpt 3: Supporting Broader Applications of Effective Community Building

Chapter 3: Recomendations—Supporting Broader Application of Community Building

We have seen that the community building approach has been responsible for impressive changes in a number of individual communities around the country and we have examined several points of view, principles, and operating strategies that help to explain those successes. But can community building become a more central component of a national strategy to address urban poverty?

The evidence is clear that in some devastated neighborhoods, charismatic leaders have emerged spontaneously to revitalize community spirit and circumstances. And in a number of others, skilled outside facilitators have helped even less forceful individuals organize their neighbors to accomplish a great deal. But in 1990 there were 7,002 high-poverty census tracts in the United States (neighborhood-sized areas with poverty rates in excess of 30 percent). Is it reasonable to expect that sound community building initiatives could be mounted in all, or even a dominant proportion of these neighborhoods?

While it is unlikely that any national effort could stimulate effective community building in all poor neighborhoods, we conclude that there is a reasonably good chance that such an effort could pay off in a significantly larger share of the communities in need that bringing community building to scale is clearly worth attempting. We offer six basic recommendations.

Recommendation 1: A National Campaign to Further Community Building

A national campaign to further the new community building is warranted. The broad group of nongovernmental and governmental institutions already involved in the field should expand their efforts and find new ways to collaborate so that such a campaign can be mounted.

Our conclusion that a national effort to strengthen and expand the new community building approach in America's poor communities is warranted now is based on four considerations.

First, the track record-of both the earlier CDC development and the recent group of more comprehensive initiatives-shows that leaders have been found (or developed) and projects have succeeded in some of what might seem to be the least promising environments. In other words, there is nothing about the other distressed neighborhoods not yet exposed to community building to suggest that it cannot work there as well.

Second, while the institutional development challenge implied by a significant expansion of community building is formidable, there is no reason to believe it is insurmountable. Few would have predicted either the quantity or the quality of CDC development that has occurred in our cities over the past 15 years, yet it did occur. And this, along with other community-based initiatives, has established institutional capacities and networks that should provide a better starting point than existed even a few years ago.

Third, the new funds needed to expand community building itself—i.e., to pay for the services of more intermediaries, trainers and facilitators and to cover some basic level of operating support for community associations—are not likely to be unreasonable, even in our present budgetary environment. Certainly they will be quite small in relation to the outlays for public assistance, social and health services, public safety, and project development that account for the bulk of the cost of our nation's social support systems for the poor. Furthermore, community building focuses on trying to prevent social problems rather than only dealing with them after they occur— and that, if effective, should act to reduce, rather than expand, requirements for social support outlays over the long term.

Fourth, we recognize what may be a substantial risk of not trying. We hope our public systems will be reformed so that they will make a much more effective contribution to dealing with the social problems of our age. Even if they are, however, given the arguments and experiences discussed previously, there is reason to doubt that they alone ultimately will work unless indigenous social capital is also rebuilt in our urban neighborhoods. And if social capital is to be rebuilt, the community building approach is certainly the most serious strategy on the table that might accomplish it.

Who Should Be Involved

When we suggest mounting a new national initiative, many people are likely to think back automatically to the programs of the 1960s: the federal government provides the funding and passes it through to local governments which, in turn, support activities in individual communities. This is definitively not what we have in mind. Model Cities is, in fact, a bad model in several respects. Direct federal programs often imply a level of external control likely to stifle the local creativity and initiative upon which successful community building depends.

We have said earlier that there is a movement-largely nongovernmental-already underway. Its activities, institutions, and networks have developed substantially, particularly over the past 15 years, and while its components may have started from different places, they now appear to be converging around a set of common themes. We believe that this movement is now coming of age. What is proposed here is to find ways to reasonably accelerate this movement-to strengthen it, support its convergence, and expand it-not the adoption of any "new program."

Required then is a further coming-together of existing institutions in the field. This does not imply the need to form any new institution, but rather the collaboration of existing ones around the shared purpose of expanding and strengthening community building across the country. The partners in it would include a broad range of national organizations that share similar (if not altogether uniform) goals-institutions like the National Community Building Network (NCBN), the National Congress for Community Economic Development (NCCED), the United Way, the Congress of National Black Churches, the Aspen Roundtable, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the Development Training Institute (DTI), the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), the America Project, the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, the Chapin Hall Center, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the Enterprise Foundation, the Urban Institute, the National Association of Neighborhood Centers, the Family Resource Coalition, and the Alliance for National Renewal, among others.

In addition, major foundations that have made commitments to improving poor communities should also be leading partners in this effort: for example, Annie E. Casey, Ford, Kauffman, Kellog, J.D. and C.T MacArthur, Pew Charitable Trusts, Rockefeller, and Surdna. And, indeed, the federal government should also be a partner.

We offer no definite plan for how these actors should organize themselves to develop a campaign to further community building-but only challenge them to find a way to do so. Clearly, early steps would have to include a series of convenings across groups in the spirit of partnership. These sessions might first give the interest groups the chance to learn about the array of recent trends and developments in the field and to get to know each other better.

We judge that convenings like this, in and of themselves, we be an important step in furthering the convergence we have discussed here. We think this would promote increased recognition that what these groups have in common is much bigger and more important than the issues of style that have separated some of them in the past- increased recognition of the urgency of their shared objectives and that they will have considerably more power in addressing them if they try to do so collaboratively and in a mutually supportive manner than if they continue to move along with full independence.

This involvement of national interest groups as advisors to, and participants in, the campaign does not imply that they would be expected to change who they are, or what they do, to any sign)ficant extent. They all bring their own particular strengths and patterns of emphasis to the field. Rather, the point is that if they do jointly participate in the campaign, and begin to collaborate in other ways, they would represent a more powerful voice in support of effective community-level practice than exists at present.

Mounting a National Campaign

The acceleration of effective community building cannot be expected to occur automatically. Urgently needed are:

more skilled facilitator/organizers who can meet with local residents in individual neighborhoods, explain the approach, help get them started, and then find ways to support them (with the right things at the right time) as they move ahead;

stronger, smarter, and more sensitive networks of institutions at all levels to assist in providing that support directly; and

governmental and leadership frameworks at the local, state, and federal levels that adapt their own rules and programmatic behaviour to create an operating environment that is conducive to community initiative-taking.

The exact shape of a national campaign to address these needs should emerge out of the deliberations of the array of partners we have suggested should be involved in it. We suggest no definite prescriptions at this point. However, the following paragraphs offer some illustrative ideas about how such deliberations might help to stimulate discussion.

• Most fundamentally, the future of community building will depend on what happens at the local level. Actions by local governments, community groups themselves, and a variety of other local intermediary institutions will make the critical difference. That is why we think the centerpiece of any viable national campaign to further effective community building (drawing participants and support from the foundations, interest groups, and federal agencies) would probably have to be an effort to influence local leadership. It might do so in a sequence something like the following:
  
  The campaign managers might first offer the charge and challenge to local foundations and grant-makers in America's metropolitan areas to be the convertors of a local strategy development process in support of community building. Presentations on the potentials might be made at meetings of the Council on Foundations and background materials would be sent to regional associations of grant-makers and individual local foundations that might have the capacity to play this role.<br>
  
  Campaign managers would then enter into initial negotiations with the local foundations that expressed interest in this approach. To prepare, national participants and advisors would pool what they know about the institutional environments in each of America's major metropolitan environments where poverty is concentrated. They would identify areas of both comparative strength and weakness and they would share information on their own past activities in each locality, as a basis for proceeding in a manner that would be sensitive to the conditions in each area.
  
  The local foundations would be asked to mobilize a broad range of local leaders (public and private) to participate in strategy formulation. Then based on a plan worked out in conjunction with the local foundation, campaign managers and national interest group representatives would visit each area, make presentations, and help to facilitate the strategy development
  process. The campaign team would be include highly qualified representatives of nationally respected institutions-they should have considerable stature and would be likely to receive a serious hearing.
  
  Campaign team presentations would describe the themes of today's community building practice nationally, explain its advantages, give examples, and then discuss methods and techniques of furthering it that have proved successful in other localities. In all areas, the team would emphasize motivating change in two areas: (a) the reform of practices and operating styles of local government agencies to create an environment conducive to community building; and (b) the establishment (or strengthening) of nongovernmental, locally based intermediarie; to support community building more directly. (These two focal points are explained more fully in our second and third recommendations, discussed in detail below.)
  
  Once the local strategy is developed, the campaign team might work in various ways to support it. Several of the national institutions suggested to participate already see working to strengthen local capacity for community-based improvement as central to their own missions. The context of local strategy formulation, with the backing of the all national campaign sponsors and participants, should in fact enhance their chances of success in this regard. The campaign, however, should be able to offer some funding (probably on a local-match basis) to support the implementation of the strategy as well-a topic to which we turn immediately below.

Recommendation 2: The Role of Local Governments

Local governments should reorient their programs and operating style to make partnerships with community builders central to their agendas.

The behavior of local agencies-county welfare and social service agencies as well as city community development, public works, and police departments-will have a significant impact on community building whatever they do. It is quite likely that they will undermine it if they either ignore it and proceed with business as usual or, alternatively, try to take it over and operate it themselves. As we see it, the only positive alternative is partnership. Local agencies should operate so that community groups come to the table as independent (not dependent) collaborators. All parties (agencies and community groups) should then take on clear performance obligations and hold each other accountable for results.

Is it reasonable to expect this to occur? In the past, local politicians and agency directors have often strongly resisted giving more power to communities. They have wanted to keep the control for themselves. Even community-elected city council representatives who fight for neighborhood interests have often wanted to direct the allocation of funds themselves rather than let community institutions have a significant role in decision making.

We do not expect such tendencies to go away easily. But there are new ways of looking at things that suggest it may be possible to diminish their effects. Most important, community groups are proposing to play a different role than politicians have seen them playing in the past. Traditionally, the communities were often seen as simply clamoring for more resources and fighting city programs that did not suit them. Those roles will not vanish entirely either. However, community groups are now emphasizing something else: taking on responsibility themselves for constructive action to address their city's most serious policy problems.

Local offficials are often well aware that many of the programs dealing with the problems of poor neighborhoods that are operated through their own bureaucracies are not working very effectively. Today, they get almost all of the blame. Communities are saying: ( I ) if you give more responsibility to us, in partnership, there is a good chance things will work better; and (2) we will explicitly share in the blame for any failures as well as the credit for successes; i.e., we are willing to be held accountable. In short, sharing power and control with community groups in this new context may be more attractive politically than it has been in the past.

Some localities are already moving in these directions, and offer examples of how they might be implemented elsewhere. We first discuss overall approaches by city governments, and then deal with the special case of social services.

Some cities seem to be working toward making their programs more "community sensitive." These programs include public works, policing, and some other service programs, as well as traditional community development activities. This sometimes means decentralizing operating responsibilities within agencies and it almost always means giving community residents more of a voice in program planning and priority setting and finding ways to employ community residents directly in city-sponsored improvement and service initiatives.

In addition, city governments can support leadership training for community residents and other means to strengthen the capacities of community organizations. Cities can do this either directly or, more often, by partnering with other groups such as community foundations and locally based intermediaries established to support community building.

Indianapolis has been one of the most forward-thinking cities in this regard, under the leadership of Mayor Stephen Goldsmith. With the support of three national foundations, Goldsmith has spearheaded a Neighborhood Empowerment Initiative which provides leadership training for community residents and the services of a paid neighborhood coordinator to assist with community projects. The initiative is explicitly designed to develop "models for promoting grassroots involvement in city affairs" and to "increase the political savvy and clout of neighborhood leaders." In addition, the city has shifted the focus of its redevelopment from the downtown area to seven targeted inner-city neighborhoods. This strategy entails partnerships between neighborhood improvement associations and local banks and nonprofit groups, as well as city government. Goldsmith has also implemented a plan to allow local churches, businesses, and nonprofits to bid on contracts to provide services, like park maintenance.

Richmond, Virginia, offers another example. City Manager Robert Bobb helped design Richmond's Neighborhood Team Process in 1988. The city was divided into nine planning districts and monthly meetings have been held since then between neighborhood leaders and city staff to discuss city priorities (more than 1,000 citizens have participated). Yet another is Charlotte, North Carolina. Charlotte's 60 neighborhoods have become the organizing units for local government. Neighborhood plans have been developed with substantial resident involvement, and city offficials orient their activity around neighborhood-specific conditions and priorities. A "customer feedback system" keeps the plans relevant and is used as a basis for determining city of ficials'compensation.

In chapter 1 we noted Minneapolis' Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP)-a joint venture between residents, government, and the private sector. It encompasses 79 of Minneapolis'81 neighborhoods and uses government and private funds to leverage financing for plans for service delivery and revitalization initiatives. The plans are actually "Neighborhood Action Plans" developed collaboratively by residents and city/county agencies. The city puts money into the implementation of these plans directly (up to $450,000 for some neighborhoods), but the communities also raise other funds to support the investments they have specified.

Community Involvement in Social Service Delivery

There are many roles community associations can play. At the minimum, they can help to coordinate and integrate services delivered by outside providers. We noted in chapter 1 that government service systems have a hard time looking at individuals and families holistically and designing packages of services that address their actual (multiple) needs. Trained community residents could be the first contact for neighbors who are in need and, after examining their circumstances, referring them to a sensible mix of outside service agencies as appropriate given the case at hand. Some cities are supporting the development of multiservice centers within individual neighborhoods-places where troubled residents can go to get help regardless of the set of problems at hand. Those centers may be staffed by service professionals along with community residents who can facilitate linkage between residents and the professionals.

It is also possible, however, for community groups to play a much more commanding role; i.e., designing and operating service programs themselves, hiring outside professionals to work in key staff functions but also hiring community residents to do as much of the work as possible (giving them both employment and training to enhance future career potentials).

While major transformations of social services remain slow to emerge, change is occuring. Local governments are already farming out an increasing amount of their "hands-on" social service work to substantive nonprofits. Doing the same with community-based nonprofits is in many way a difference in degree rather than in kind.

In some places, bold changes along these lines are taking place. Los Angeles County, for example, in the face of rapidly heightening rates of child abuse and neglect, has substantially reformed its approach to child welfare. In the new system, the County contracts with a nongovernmental "lead agency" in a given neighborhood and assigns that agency first-line responsibility for handling the care and monitoring of troubled families. So far 25 "neighborhood networks" have been set up in this way. The lead agencies vary depending on which group has the strongest potential for such work in the neighborhood-responsibilities may be assigned to churches, community associations, or even neighborhood boys clubs. New York City is considering a simi-lar approach.

Recommendation 3: The Importance of Nongovernmental, Locally Based Intermediaries

A high priority should be given to establishing (or strengthening) nongovernmental, locally based intermediaries to support community building and community interests in all metropolitan areas.

We have suggested that the most important requirement to expand community building at this point is for more capable people to act as facilitators-"coaches" if you will-to work with individual neighborhood groups. Who should these individuals be? It does not make sense for federal, or even state, officials to try to take on this role. Similarly, it would not be realistic for all of them to be employees of national foundations. As noted earlier, major foundations have done an admirable job in supporting individual community building initiatives and in drawing lessons from them. But even given the way these foundations see their own role, let alone the logistical implications, this could never be a model for broad-scale expansion.

It seems to us that most of the people who facilitate the expansion of community building in individual neighborhoods have to be employed by local institutions-people who are trained in facilitation and community building principles, but are also sensitively aware of local social, economic, and political circumstances and pay attention to how they change from day-to-day; people who work for institutions that also understand local conditions and see themselves first as long-term stakeholders in the future of their own metropolis. National institutions, no matter how well motivated, are too far removed from the action and should not view themselves as a part of "us" in the local environment.

Locally Based Community Building Intermediaries and the Changing Local Context

As noted above, agencies of local government can create hospitable environments for community building and serve as effective partners with community groups in many initiatives. But another type of local institution is needed if community building practice is to reach its potential. Community groups need some city-level entity that they trust to represent their interests (sometimes in opposition to agencies of government even though the overall emphasis may be on attempting to negotiate collaborative partnerships with public agencies and other local institutions). We think a high priority is warranted for the creation (and/or strengthening) of one or more nongovernmental, locally based intermediaries in each metropolis. These are institutions that would work at all levels to support community building: helping new community associations to get organized and providing technical assistance and facilitation services to them, but also representing them and dealing on their behalf with the broader society.

There is evidence that, in many metropolitan areas, the local institutional/decision making context is changing to accommodate (if not encourage) new institutions like these. Not too long ago, it was thought that consideration of public issues in a city should occur primarily through government channels, recognizing that local "power elites" often had considerable influence on outcomes behind the scenes. Today, there is movement toward more open dialogues and action programs involving a broader range of actors.

Allan Wallis has reviewed recent developments in regional governance in a number of U.S. metropolitan areas.sS He sees: "(1) significantly increased and direct involvement of the private and nonprofit sectors on a regional scale; (2) a new type of elected leadership that is more willing to negotiate and partner in efforts to build a metropolitan community; and (3) increasing use of facilitated decision-making processes to help establish shared visions, resolve conflicts, and develop consensus regarding regional interests."

He emphasizes that the new leadership coalitions and networks often represent some impressive bridge-building between groups that have often been at odds in the past (for example, business leaders, community groups, nonprofit social service providers, and government agencies). Most seem to be reaching out for inclusiveness; e.g., by including representatives from inner-city communities on their boards. For a number of them, regional economic development and job generation are priority themes, but many give high priority to programs addressing the issue of persistent poverty. Of the latter, some are oriented around strategic planning processes involving a number of newer nonprofit interest groups and service providers, along with more established institutions, like the United Way and relevant public agencies.

In a growing number of areas, a key actor in these coalitions is a local philanthropic community foundation. Community foundations are generally respected as nonpartisan, and their objectives focus on improving the quality of life in their areas over the long term. Many of them have moved beyond their traditional forms of giving (e.g., to the arts) and are now playing an active role, as catalyst as well as funder, in a variety of new social service and urban improvement efforts, often in collaboration with community groups. And community foundations now appear to be the fastest growing component of philanthropy in America. In 1994, they received more than $1 billion in donations-50 percent more than in 1993-pushing their total assets nationally to $10.4 billion. It seems to us that community foundations are often likely to be the most attractive entities to sponsor (and play a central role in overseeing) local intermediaries set up to support community building.

Functions of Locally Based Community Building Intermediaries

In fact, city- or area-wide community building intermediaries of the kind we have in mind already exist in a number of U.S. cities. Together, they illustrate what can be accomplished. One that works closely in support of community groups is the Fund for the City of New York. Others include the Baltimore's Citizen's Planning and Housing Association, Boston's Persistent Poverty Project (in effect, a branch of the Boston Foundation), Denver's Piton Foundation, and Oakland's Urban Strategies Council (supported by both local community foundations and the Rockefeller Foundation).

The style of these groups is to work strategically and entrepreneurially to further community interests, but they work hard to earn and maintain the respect and trust of citywide leadership groups and local governments as well. For example, with respect to "hot" political issues, they generally avoid taking sides and try to play a balanced role in informing the debate. We have said that the basic function of such intermediaries is to support the strengthening of community building in individual neighborhoods, but all perform many other functions as well, such as:

• Convening community representatives and citywide interests and agencies to discuss issues that are important to poor neighborhoods, and participating in mobilizing collaborations to respond to them.
  
• Helping citywide leadership coalitions prepare visions and strategic plans for their cities. (For example, all of those listed above participated in preparing their city's application for the Empowerment Zone program and several are now playing the central role in monitoring its performance.) The Urban Strategies Council played a leading role in forming Oakland's application, recruiting young community residents to gather baseline data and then converting them into responsible players in implementation.
  
• Using their convening ability to further inclusiveness and understanding; i.e., providing opportunities for relevant players (from the communities and from outside entities) to the same table, so they get to know each other.
  
• Mobilizing and operating citywide leadership training programs for community residents. The Piton Foundation's program has been an important model in this regard.
  
• Providing services to assist in conflict resolution.
  
• Working with the local media to get news about achievements in poor communities out to the general public and providing facts to counter distorted images about those neighborhoods.

All of these support organizations, in fact, rely on the provision of reliable information as a key tool to accomplish their objectives. Each of them has developed and operates a sophisticated computer-based information system on changing neighborhood conditions. The fact that they can assemble the most reliable data relevant to community change issues quickly, and reach out to provide the data to those at all levels in decision making, has clearly enhanced their influence in their own cities.They also make a special effort to get information in the hands of community builders in individual neighborhoods and help them learn how to use it.

An Example: The Urban Strategies Council

An illustration of the way the Urban Strategies Council (USC) has used its information capacity to further reforms may help to solidify understanding of the potential of locally based intermediaries.6' In 1990, the USC and the superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District recognized a common challenge. The school system and the city's array of social service agencies were not dealing with children holistically. Students' cliffficulties at school often emanated from problems at home, but the efforts of the schools and other agencies to help were fragmented and sometimes contradictory. They normally become involved only at times of crisis, rather than working coherently to address root causes so as to prevent crises.

Because of the recognition of its advanced data processing capabilities, and the fact that it already had some of the relevant information on hand, the USC was able to secure, process, and link school and social agency data files for the students of one elementary school and their families. The results were presented to agency representatives in a 1991 meeting called "The Same Client." The results on the overlap of service provision were striking and motivated agreement to conduct a similar study for a much larger population (students at eight schools). In 1992, USC published the results in the report Partnership for Change. They showed that almost two out of three students used public services, and more than a third used at least two different services. It also documented that the system was investing much more in crisis services than prevention, and that there were important differences in the nature of service needs and provision for different racial groups.

Study findings were presented to the County Board of Supervisors and other high level officials, but their most important use was in the work of Oakland's Interagency Group (convened and facilitated by USC). The process established new working relationships between representatives of different agencies and forced them to recognize their common challenge. They had to "acquaint themselves with agencies outside of their normal scope of work" in defining the questions they hoped the data-match would answer, and then, after the results were in, "discuss the kinds of joint action they might undertake, patterns of service use, relationships among agencies, and the ultimate effectiveness of existing programs."

The process resulted in the idea of redeploying staff from different agencies to form a "Family Support Team" around individual schools. The Team would "develop new collaborative strategies for working with troubled families, taking on the crisis situations most taxing for schools, and leaving school resources to be focused on prevention, on establishing more positive activities, and on outreach to parents." This concept has since been tested in several schools and wider-scale implementation is underway. USC continues to be involved in monitoring performance and providing ongoing guidance and support.

Recommendation 4: Collabration for National Capacity Building National supporters should work to substantially strengthen training and technical assistance capacity for community building, and build public awareness of its importance.

Expanding capacity for training and technical assistance is fundamental to an effort to expand effective community building practice. This should be a major role for the collaboration of national foundations and interest groups that come together for this purpose. Again, however, the job is not one of starting from scratch. A number of qualified training/technical assistance institutions already exist in fields related to community building. The effort should focus on how best to build onto these existing capabilities.

The starting point should be to get representatives of these institutions together to talk about what they have in common, and work toward more convergence in themes, assess their current capacities, and examine how, in partnership, they might best expand them. Leaders of the national collaboration should attend these meetings, participate in forming the strategy, and then make plans for how they can support it.

The expansion of training capacity is required in three areas. First, there is the need to train community residents-in leadership, and in all other technical and association development capabilities that community building requires. This is a task that cannot be performed well from national, or even regional, centers. Most of it will have to occur at the local level. Some training for neighborhood leaders could certainly be provided by the locally based community building intermediaries we have advocated (after they have themselves been trained as trainers by one or more of the qualified national firms and institutions in the field). However, in many cities, it might make more sense for the local intermediary to make arrangements for this type of training to be delivered by a local community college.

Throughout the nation, community colleges are extremely important assets for the poor, but they have seldom taken advantage of the opportunities that exist for them to assist neighborhood improvement initiatives directly. National level training institutions and collaboration leaders could mount a campaign to encourage community colleges to develop courses in community building for local residents, and then provide model curricula, clearing house services, and other assistance to help them do so.

The second type of training that needs to be expanded is for the professionals who will staff new and growing locally based intermediaries and serve as facilitators of community building in individual neighborhoods. As noted, there are a number of competent institutions that now provide training in community organization and neighborhood improvement processes. These already regularly adapt their curricula as the field develops and further improvements can be anticipated as the implications of the themes discussed in chapter 2 and the role of locally based intermediaries are more fully developed and understood. However, we also see the need for our nation's major universities (particularly its urban universities) to provide additional training capacity for the field. At present, there are very few universities that offer courses on community building practice, attempt to integrate community building themes in relevant professional curricula, or provide certificate programs for students that may be interested in career opportunities in community building. It is particularly important that schools of social work rethink their curricula along these lines, but schools of urban planning and public poliq might well either partner in such efforts or offer relevant course work independently as it may relate to their own disciplines.

Third, there is a need to train managers of entities that provide services to the poor (public agencies and nonprofits) and other public administrators on the benefits and techniques of partnering with community groups in service delivery. National supporters should mount a concerted effort to press schools of social work, public administration, planning, and other university settings in which social agency personnel are trained to incorporate materials on community building and methods of involving community residents in social service provision into their curricula. This should be emphasized not only in masters-level professional programs, but also in regular in-service training programs for professionals already at work in these fields.

Managers of the campaign should also call upon relevant professional associations to host sessions on community building in their annual meetings and to sponsor other initiatives to integrate relevant community building themes in their own professional practice. Such groups include, for example, the National Association of Social Workers, the International City and County Managers Association, and the American Planning Association.

Another key task of the collaboration of national foundations and interest groups should be to develop a serious campaign to better educate America's public about the real problems and opportunities of poor communities and about the potentials of community building in addressing them. Throughout this monograph, we have discussed instances where the media, often by telling only a part of the story, have distorted the public's understanding of today's poverty, its causes, and its potential solutions. Normally, the bad news is all that is covered. The success stories of community building, however, ought to be newsworthy as well. But not enough effort is being made at present to research them adequately, express them in forms appropriate for broad presentation, and ensure that they are circulated to media representatives.

Recommendation 5: Roles of Federal and State Governments

Federal and state governments should play a strong role as supporting partners in this initiative.

We have argued that efforts to further effective community building should not take the form of a federal government program. For the same reasons, state governments should not be the primary actors in this mission. However, if the sponsorship and design of such an effort comes primarily from private foundations and interest groups, and funding for it is diversified, there are clearly benefits to be gained from federal and state agencies serving in the role of supportive partners.

There are a number of things such agencies could do to help. For example, they could provide support for training, information clearing houses, and monitoring and research. Also, they can make use of the "bully pulpit," along with other means at their disposal, to encourage the local governments and various private entities to provide resources for community based initiatives and to modify their standard practices in ways that facilitate community action. In addition, such agencies can also provide financial support themselves. And there is no reason for their funding to flow through just one channel. There are at least three options:

• Requiring that some share of their block grants to state and local governments be used to support community initiatives. In social services, as well as in housing production, local governments are increasingly relying on nonprofits as delivery mechanisms without federal or state nudging, but some federal pressure could be helpful, at least initially, to expedite the trend. HUD's HOME program (a flexible block grant to localities for housing) already encourages the development of the community nonprofit delivery sector by requiring that localities spend a minimum level through Community Housing Development Organizations (CHDOs). This approach could also be applied to other types of initiatives community builders may want to undertake; e.g., crime prevention, health services, social services. This would be difficult in social services at present but it becomes more of an option as the trend toward block grants and the delegation of more flexibility to state and local actors moves forward. We recognize that care would have to be taken in this approach in setting reasonable (not too ambitious) minimums, and in the design of serious but noncumbersome accountability systems. As noted, the federal Empowerment Zone program also incorporated relevant "process requirements," primarily that local community groups be seriously involved in program planning.



• Direct competitive grants to community groups. Here, community groups submit proposals to federal or state agencies to fund specific activities and a limited number of awards are made. Peter Drier discusses two federal programs that already operate in this way: the John Heinz Neighborhood Development Program (formerly operated by HUD) which was used to support a variety of community-based initiatives; and the Technical Assistant Grant (TAG) Program (operated by EPA) to support communities in performing evaluations of Superfund sites.62 In programs like these, the grants are typically small and given for a well-defined purpose with fairly clear expectations as to results (they do not imply much risk for the federal government). Communities have to demonstrate that they have some administrative capacity and the ability to prepare a sound project concept if they expect to win in the competition.



• Federal and state contributions to a nongovernment-operated community building support fund. The model here is the National Community Development Initiative (NCDI). NCDI was mounted by several national foundations to provide additional support for local nonprofit housing production. HUD has contributed to it ($20 million so far) but it is only one of many funders, and has not attempted to (nor is it in a position to) control the way the Initiative operates. The basic idea is that when there is a sound nongovernmental system operating in the public interest and focused on national policy objectives, and that system has reasonable internal controls and accountability, the government should be able to contribute to expand it without elaborate oversight.

It would seem appropriate for some share of the funds from most of these sources to be devoted to building the support network (intermediaries, technical assistance and training entities, research and evaluation) in addition to supporting local community building initiatives directly.

At the federal level, we see the need for the President to expand the emphasis on implementing community building principles to reach beyond Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities, either by broadening the mandate of the community Empowerment Board or by elevating support for community building as a part of the functions of the National Performance Review. This effort should draw on already existing experiences at the national level in the Empowerment Zone, HOPE VI, and Consolidated Plan efforts at HUD; welform reform, the Office of Community Services, Neighborhood Centers and healthy community programs at HHS; community schools and education reform efforts at Education; community anti-crime efforts at Justice; and community-based job placement, training, and employee support programs at Labor.

Recommendation 6: Nuturing Community Building in Individual Neighborhoods

Supporters should find ways to nurture community building in individual neighborhoods, not overwhelm it.

In considering how best to support community building overall, it makes sense to start by thinking about the way it needs to work in individual neighborhoods. When looking for new places to provide assistance, it is important to remember that virtually all neighborhoods have been exposed to some form of organizing, i.e., they have some institutions (churches, clubs, etc.) that have tried to do something to improve conditions in the past. The starting point is to learn that history and learn who the players are.

Community builders understand that a neighborhood's starting phase-when a few interested people and/or institutions have been identified that want to do something but little is yet underway-is the one that must be handled most sensitively. Supporters need to recognize that the building of ultimately sound relationships and programs will take time. They need to provide pressure for results along the way to keep it going, but not too big a push at any one time. Their goal should continually be to "move it up a notch." There are many stories of community initiatives that had outstanding success in their work with, say, 5 families, but collapsed when they tried immediately thereafter to apply the same techniques to 100 families. Supporters also need to recognize there will be conflicts and setbacks as they proceed. They need to avoid being too desperate for outcomes and establishing timing expectations with overly"hard edges."

Moreover, supporters need to recognize that there will be failures. They need to remember that most small businesses started in America fail, yet the overall system succeeds. Entrepreneurs learn from their mistakes, try again, and ultimately a large share of them make it. One of the most important skills is helping nascent community initiatives regroup and rebound when morale is low after they have suffered a serious blow. What the field needs is, in effect, a set of social venture capitalists with enough patience to see this kind of a process through to ultimate payoffs, recognizing again that it will take time.

The way that funding is provided involves a sensitive balance. If the community does not feel there is a high probability that it will garner reasonable levels of support over tne long term, it will not try to mount an agenda that is ambitious enough. On the other hand, if it feels substantial long term funding is guaranteed at the outset, it may not have strong enough incentives to produce results. Focus group discussions convened by the aspen Roundtable in 1995 reflected the need for sophistication in achieving a workable mix:

Several participants across groups suggest that putting all the money up front is not in the interest of either the funder or the planning group. For an initiative, a sudden influx of money can distort the planning process and . .. Iead to a focus on allocation of dollars rather than the development of a collaborative process and a shared strategic plan. Several funders and Comprehensive Community Initiative directors suggest that a series of grants for planning, organizational development, capacity-building, and implementation, given out on the basis of mutually agreed-upon evidence of short-term progress, is in the best interest of both parties. In fact, some suggest that it is not even necessary for major funding to flow in the early stages of an initiatives, that funding should instead serve as an incentive for action and reward for progress . . . the important element is the commitment of . .. Iong term support, not necessarily the up-front allocation of those dollars.

These remarks reflect positions that have moved considerably beyond what one might have heard from community advocates even in the recent past. They indicate a new awareness of the need to get the incentives right, so that the primary actors-the community groups themselves-will feel an appropriate mix of hope and pressure to perform. They pattern funding streams in a manner that is consistent with the operating style of the new community builders themselves-a sort of strategic incrementalism in which you learn from both success and mistakes and adjust the program as you go, without making final commitments too far out in front.

The community might start with a fairly modest grant from a core funder to get organized and do some planning, with a promise of more if things go well. It then plans its first signature campaign and perhaps secures funding for that from another source (at that point, when that particular campaign has been thought through, it is possible to specify realistic performance benchmarks about which they would not have known enough to develop in a more general planning exercise at the start). New funding is sought as new campaigns and projects are planned out. No one-neither the community nor the funders-needs to get locked into a long-term agenda that precludes serious mid-course corrections. This style also reflects what has become a key maxim in all branches of management of late. That is, higher levels (the funders) should negotiate the results they expect from those doing the work (the community), but let the workers use their own creativity in determining how to achieve those results, without heavy oversight from outside.

The approach is also based on understanding that problems have emerged when community groups have come to rely on one dominant source for support. That source inevitably sees itself as responsible for results overall and exerts pressures to control the agenda that the community is not in a position to fully resist. The community is, once again, dependent. Peter Drier, for example, recognizes the importance of communities partnering with local governments and notes that a growing number of local agencies have learned to work with community groups constructively, but even so, he says: "experience suggests that community organizations are most effective when they are independent trom local government so that the partnership is based on mutual respect and reciprocity, not dependency." To some extent, the same problems can be anticipated if the community is dependent predominantly on any single donor (even a foundation )-diversity of support is a sound objective.

Index

Preface
Executive Summary
Chpt 1: Context & Convergence
Chpt 2: Themes of the New Community Building
Chpt 3: Supporting Broader Applications of Effective Community Building

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