CPN is designed and maintained by ONline @ UW: Electronic Publishing Group.

Topics: Community

Story-Making, continued

Index

Contents

Story-Making and Community Building

• Atlanta, Georgia — Mark O'Connell
• Charlotte, North Carolina — Charles Page
• Chattanooga, Tennessee — Dan Bowers
• Cincinnati, Ohio — Pat Coyle
• Denver, Colorado — Mike Durkin
• Honolulu, Hawaii — Irving Lauber
• Kansas City, Missouri — Gina Pulliam
• Los Angeles, California — Jeff Wilcox
• Louisville, Kentucky — Joe Tolan
• Memphis, Tennessee — Regina Walker
• Mesa, Arizona — Dan Duncan
• Minneapolis, Minnesota — Terri Barreiro
• Nashville, Tennessee — Doug Anderson
• New Orleans, Louisiana — Beth Terry
• Omaha, Nebraska — Jim Sullivan
• Rochester, New York — Bill McCullough
• Sacramento, California — Janet Self
• Saint Louis, Missouri — Lotti Wade
• Schenectady, New York — Susan Kramer
• White Plains, New York — Ralph Gregory

Recommendations for United Way of America
Writing the Next Story-Making

Story-Making and Community Building

During the afternoon small groups sessions, the participants shared community-building stories from their United Way. Each storymaker described a unique challenge, development of a diversity of new resources, and implementation of innovative solutions. Each person's story was unique to that community and that United Way and resulted in strengthening the local community. Upon reflection, we realized that we had learned invaluable lessons and that certain principles had evolved. By sharing these findings, as well as our thoughts and suggestions based on our experiences, we could help our colleagues and partners achieve success in their local community-building efforts.

The following stories, which summarize a variety of successful community-building experiences, are neither quotes nor the whole story. Therefore, we encourage readers interested in specific initiatives or experiences to contact the person sharing the story. Although not models for replication, the following success stories can inspire us to develop community-building initiatives in our own locales.

Atlanta, Georgia
- Mark O'Connell

Community building is central to who we are. For us, it is neither a program, nor a project, nor an initiative. We are a community-building organization.

The assumptions on which we have been working, for example, expanding middle class, sufficiency of individual hard work, and removal of occasional and exceptional needs, are no longer valid. United Way is not aligned to the new reality. It is not a matter of adding tactics, but of realigning our total strategy, going back to our roots. Needs for direct service still exist. But, they must be a part of an overall community-building strategy. If they are not, then we simply add to the crisis.

Through an organizational transformation process, using a professional consulting firm, we began to shift our management process to realign ourselves organizationally. We have developed the following five steps:

• A broad-based engagement of the community to identify the areas of focus.
• A balancing of investments, financial and people resources, toward prevention through community strengthening.
• Tracking the progress toward achieving community-established goals.
• Engaging funders in a community investment strategy.
• Appealing for funds through corporations and other organizations to invest in actions to address community issues.

We are learning our community building through concrete experimentation in two local communities: a low-income housing project and a middle-income neighborhood. Also, we are a lead partner with the Atlanta Project in school-related family/ community services. Our primary principle is the "partnership principle." We do not do good works for the community. We work with the community, as a part of the community, sharing responsibility.

Our major lesson learned and advice to our colleagues:

We are constantly learning and have a lot more to learn. We do not have the answers. Learning means taking some risks and giving up control. At least now when we fail, we are failing about the right things.

Suggestions for United Way of America:

United Way of America could establish a top-level national capacity for community building, a National Center for Community Problem-Solving that collects the best people, publications, education, and directions. The center would be a resource to all United Ways and their partners, as well as to communities nationwide. It would represent the new, revitalized United Way.

Charlotte, North Carolina
- Charles Page

During the 1980s, we developed a lot of new programs. In the 1990s, we are becoming more collaborative and grass roots. Through Success By 6(D, we began concentrating on eight key neighborhoods, tapping into some energies that were coalescing already in those communities. We worked through the local YMCAs, which was also changing from a health and recreation provider to a neighborhood center through which the local community could organize its resources.

The community organized itself to make some substantial changes. For example, it leveraged the city to reorganize the transit system to better serve people and help get them to employment. Four key tenets that emerged are:

• Focus on prevention over treatment
• Neighborhood-based and driven activities
• Asset-over deficiency-based organization
• Evaluation through community-determined outcomes integrated into the process

Now, we are moving into other neighborhoods of the city where it will be more difficult because the energies we discerned in the first neighborhoods are not apparent. Therefore, we are establishing "listening posts:" staff and volunteers who agree to spend time listening to discern the assets and leadership and potential on which we might build.

Our lessons and advice to colleagues:

• Work with the neighborhood folks —getting beyond the "we are here to help you" to "what can we be doing together." Trust comes hard and through lots of interaction.
• Collaboration means sharing ownership and credit, which can be tough because we naturally want to be recognized.

Advice to United Way of America:

• Connect and integrate community building with outcome evaluation. These two initiatives are not separate.
• We need a strong voice at the national level providing the best practices, the links to major initiatives, and even a national thrust in community building.

Chattanooga, Tennessee
- Dan Bowers

In 1995, when we rewrote our strategic plan, we articulated the value of collaboration —that we cannot operate in a vacuum, but only as a team player. This idea prompted us to play a lead role in organizing a coalition of local funders to look at what we are all doing, how we might work together, and where we might connect around major efforts. We are focusing on neighborhood revitalization and community strengthening.

We have been involved in an effort through which neighbors, with the assistance first of the Junior League and now the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, have been organizing themselves and really turning around their neighborhood. The characteristics of this effort are resident-driven, results-oriented, prevention-based, and asset-based. We are planning to use our experience with this project in other communities.

Our allocation process shifted to a focus on outcomes. We no longer fund agencies, but programs with outcomes. We use a tool that sets 14 parameters for funding and that considers the quality of the program, development of the community, and the organizational capacity. The agencies, which were part of the transition, helped develop the outcomes and the tool. To support the agency development into the new approach, we are establishing a Center for Nonprofit Management.

Advice to colleagues:

• Make sure that the volunteer leadership understands and feels ownership for the change.
• Include the agencies at the table every step along the way. They may not agree with the shift, but they need to understand it fully.
• Clearly define the shift to donors. Find ways to cooperate with other funders.

Advice to United Way of America:

• Facilitate the learning process between organizations. Keep us informed about best practices, new developments. Conferences and leadership sessions are important.

Cincinnati, Ohio
- Pat Coyle

We started our community-building approach about five years ago when we decided to integrate our planning and allocations functions and tie in special grants and agency evaluations. We began planning a family/community resource center approach with our agencies that would create community-based services and action. A demonstration project was initiated with five agencies. They receive $2 million in a block grant instead of categorical funds, linked to specific problems or programs. They have agreed to participate in a community-based evaluation process based on outcomes.

Agency staff and volunteers throughout the United Way are being educated in evaluation based on community outcomes. The lessons from the Family Resource Center experiment are being communicated to all the fields of service throughout the United Way process.

We brought John McKnight and John Kretzmann to train us in community building through assets mapping. A neighborhood leadership training institute, which is staffed by a person from United Way, was organized with Xavier University. Funds are being organized for small seed grants to neighborhoods for capacity strengthening. We hosted the UWA conference on economic development and followed-up with a proposal for establishing a micro-enterprise loan fund for neighborhood based economic development. We helped form the Housing Alliance, which links neighborhood groups with banks and city agencies to support community-based low-income housing development.

Senior staff clearly accept this movement and agencies and volunteers that have been educated into the process generally support it. Nevertheless, tensions arise as certain volunteers, who want to protect agencies, resist moving funding and energies into neighborhoods.

Advice to colleagues:

• Use (and increase) flexible dollars to promote and support community building.
• Learn from each other. Each area is unique; models can neither be imported nor transported.
• Have the top United Way executive not only support, but also actually participate in community-building efforts.
• Engage the whole system, including the agencies. Move deliberately, but not too fast. It is important to bring people along. Don't get too far ahead. Be sure there is something in it for the agencies.

Advice to United Way of America:

• Find opportunities to connect to national foundations and national networks.
• Help educate the Leadership 18 agencies into what we are doing and get their understanding and support.
• Connect the work on impact and outcomes with the community building.

Denver, Colorado
- Mike Durkin

Community building in which we partner with local grassroots leadership is clearly in our future. Through efforts such as those listed below, we are learning new roles and approaches. We are quite active in community development, for example:

• We are supporting community organization in five Denver neighborhoods.
• We are partnering with the Enterprise Foundation, leveraging $70,000 to get $1.9 million to build 32 units of housing as a prototype to linking social and economic development in low-income communities.
• We are at the table with neighborhood leadership planning ventures in their communities throughout the city.

We believe that member agencies can and must be brought along within this strategy through example, education, and encouragement. We recognize that community building is, to a large extent, still on the margins. It has not been totally integrated into all the functions of United Way.

We are using funds for community development especially raised for that purpose through our Alexis de Tocqueville Campaign, through fund balances, and through partnerships with foundations. We don't need to apologize for this. It is on the margins that we are learning and then encouraging our partners to come along. How fast we integrate and change depends on how fast we learn as a total system.

Advice to colleagues:

• It is important that we not just "preach to the converted." The Nashville Symposium was great, but we need to bring along agency executives, volunteer leadership, the Leadership 18 agencies, and even less sympathetic colleagues.
• We need a "common man's" approach to evaluation. Results or outcome measurements must not be just a professional or agency responsibility. It should relate to what ordinary citizens can grasp as success, for example, Gardner's community scorecard.

Advice to United Way of America:

• Convene for two to three days about 15 United Ways who really want to shape the United Way Community Building strategy. Include top staff, volunteer leadership, agency leadership, and key advisors. Hammer out a national community building strategy for United Way.

Honolulu, Hawaii
- Irving Lauber

Using the Hawaii Community Services Council, its planning arm, Aloha United Way organized and staffed a Partners Group, including the public and private human service funders. Through the Partners Group, a statewide Hawaii benchmarks process was carried out. The process primarily elicited a vision for the future of Hawaii, based on the participation of those for whom the future is most important —thousands of the youth of Hawaii. Then, it identified benchmarks that the people of Hawaii want to use for planning and decision making.

Aloha United Way adopted the goal that 75 percent of all United Way funds will be allocated according to these benchmarks by 2002. The allocations committee is now deciding which of the benchmarks are most appropriate for United Way resources and energy. The United Way is establishing its own benchmarks for a significantly-changed allocation process tied to benchmarks that the community established and clear outcomes that relate to these benchmarks.

Lessons and thoughts to colleagues:

• We need to apply asset mapping to ourselves: identify what we do best and want to build on, for example, flexibility of dollars, linkages to agencies, funders, corporations, and volunteers.
• We need to apply to ourselves what we are asking the agencies to do, for example, connect activities to measurable outcomes and community benchmarks. That means biting the bullet regarding the way we raise and allocate money.
• Rather than ask how community building and impact planning affect fund raising and allocation, we need to ask how we can do fund raising and allocations to effect community building and achieve community-established benchmarks.
• Community building means doing things differently from how we are doing them today. We don't know yet how to collect and target resources strategically so that they truly effect change in structures and systems. But, we are asking the right questions and are trying the right things.

Advice to United Way of America:

• UWA needs to work out the tension between being a national leadership organization and an excellent trade association.
• UWA is in a position to do "model testing" with research, follow up evaluation, and by providing field support. It should not be replicating what is already being done.
• The development of a Community Building Institute or Center provides a great opportunity to establish a community building capacity that does not exist now. This new capacity will nourish thought and foster technology for developing the kind of communities in which we want our children and grandchildren to live and gain sustenance. Such a center could help us market what we do better in community building.

Kansas City, Missouri
- Gina Pulliam

Major initiatives in neighborhood-level community building have occurred in Kansas City, often spearheaded by others. We have the challenge to embrace these movements and their concepts and to figure out our new leadership role in relation to them.

LINC (Local Investment Commission) is a partnership of the state and local businessmen to totally reorganize the state human service system, devolving decision making to the local community. LINC focuses on:

• Welfare reform
• A neighborhood-based service system through community schools
• Plan for the consent decree for child welfare

Although we are totally involved, we are not considered a leading partner. The reason is partially because we are not bringing our funding to the table. Most of the funding goes to our member agencies. Our challenge is to work with our agencies to help them get into the neighborhood-based system. Through another initiative, we played a lead role in addressing the child welfare reform efforts. We will be bringing LINC a proposal to partner in addressing these system reforms.

United Way was the convener and host for the Kretzmann - McKnight Asset training in Kansas City. Through these meetings and local discussions, a small program for neighborhoods to do asset mapping was initiated by a United Way agency, the Kansas City Neighborhood Alliance. We are continuing to plan with this organization and other interested local funders about how to support this approach in our community. We are the convener for the Block Grant Response Team through which we developed a pro-active agenda that relates to block grant funding of human services. We are working to position ourselves to connect with a whole new group of neighborhood-based groups. We are looking to better orient ourselves to neighborhoods; however, we have not yet integrated this into our regular functions.

Learnings and advice to colleagues:

• We need to find ways to integrate community building, including asset mapping and neighborhood-based action, into other aspects of United Way. The new ways, which should not consist of separate initiatives, can influence how we raise and distribute funds.
• We can be the vehicle for bringing the agencies into an understanding of their new roles and responsibilities related to community building.
• Change comes from many directions and points. It is not a single, clear, linear event. That change is true for our communities and our organizations.

Advice to United Way of America:

• The leadership, such as demonstrated in the Nashville Conference on Community Building and our Leadership Symposium, is essential.
• We need to be consistent with the community-building direction. Stick with it. Do not make it another fad. Keep bringing the total system along in the effort.

Los Angeles, California
- Jeff Wilcox

We look at the community-building thrust, with its partnership approach, and focus on community outcomes, not as an add-on, but as central to the mission of United Way. As a total organization, we have moved beyond a request-for-proposal to a collaborative planning for strength approach. Agencies are recognizing that they must collaborate. They no longer have the luxury of setting up separate services and programs. Now they need to be managed within a total system. Just as health maintenance organizations (HMOs) are gaining in the medical arena, we see ourselves as a social management organization (SMO) through which key funders and providers can concentrate resources for maximum effect.

This approach means moving from program allocation to "systems funding." We started by using "new dollars" for focusing on systems, not on agencies or programs. Our total fund raising and allocation process is being reviewed and reorganized to achieve this.

Advice to colleagues:

• We must recognize that there are no longer two sides of our work —fund raising and planning/allocations. We need an entire systems approach. Focusing on agencies is only half the picture. We lose if we just distribute and collect pledge cards and handout money to agencies. The focus must be on affecting the total system engaging donors, agencies, and other key players.
• The needs approach is bankrupt. Sixty years of action based on needs hasn't made a real dent in the system. We must build on what is working, not on needs. Whether the assets approach will work is still to be demonstrated. But carrying out the same needs-based strategy will just ensure another 60 years of the same results.

Advice to United Way of America:

• National systems affect us locally. The challenge is to stimulate those systems through advocacy efforts that will facilitate planning throughout the system.
• There is tremendous call for training and technical assistance, but not the kind where you go to Alexandria for a short time or they send someone out for a short time. Recognize that professional development differs significantly from technical assistance. The technical assistance role is continuous support at various points in the system, to avoid putting those points in competition with each other. United Way of America should see itself as a systems catalyst, not as a systems manager.

Louisville, Kentucky
- Joe Tolan

We see community building as a significant, different thrust for United Way and really believe that it needs to be undertaken deliberately. It is important that staff and volunteer leadership understand the values and principles involved and be prepared for a long-term commitment; it is not a project or a quick fix. It is a fundamentally different way of doing business.

Most of us have not been trained in this approach, so we have the challenge and opportunity to learn what it means to work in true partnership and to engage others at the neighborhood level. Many, if not most, of us are used to "top-down" priority setting. We have the opportunity to realize that a commitment to community building affects every function in United Way and requires that we learn to work in new ways.

The Community Collaboration Forum, a new collaborative, community-building process in Louisville, is providing us with the chance to cut our teeth. The forum, which is a broad-based, bottoms-up process, began by creating and articulating a shared vision, values, and guiding principles. The forum's membership requirement is disarmingly simple: you show up. Currently, from 75 to 100 individuals comprise the adopted forum. Decision-making is a consensus model.

The emerging action agenda of the forum will differ from the agenda of any participating entity, including the United Way. The group does not have a predetermined road map, only an emerging general sense of direction. Focusing on building consensus, open participation by all interested parties, and voluntary commitment to a shared vision preclude reliance on a pre-existing master plan.

United Way of America can help us all define and refine the principles that are the underpinnings of a community-building process. Thus, knowledge of the impact such an approach has on how we currently do business will increase our appreciation. This process includes an initial emphasis on values rather than single issues. This shift is perhaps the most significant transition for United Ways, and UWA can help by articulating the "collective lore" from our United Way system.

Memphis, Tennessee
- Regina Walker

Our shift to local community-based development was unplanned. We had decided to set aside funds for community ventures through which nonmember community groups could apply. This venture program brought our staff and volunteers in contact with people and opportunities before unknown to us. Through the ventures program, we began a serious listening process in which we learned information that we were not getting from our member agencies. We also discovered new allies. Out of the process, we decided that we would use funds in such a way that community people were in charge; that projects were part of a holistic, neighborhood-based approach; and that appreciable differences could be made in neighborhood strength.

Significant strides have been made in housing and community development, in participation of local neighborhood people, and in organizing new partnerships for local and regional community building. We have learned a lot. However, we still have to integrate our findings throughout our United Way system. Thus, our staff, our volunteers, and especially our agencies understand the goals and approach of community building, and all the functions of United Way are oriented toward it.

Advice to colleagues:

• Having passion for community building is important but be careful not to alienate those caught in traditional methods. It is not an either-or situation. People have to be brought along.
• Build on what you have. Don't try to construct an approach out of "whole cloth," thereby neglecting the people and organizations already connected to United Way.
• It is important to establish a way to really listen to communities beyond the traditional structures of language and organization.

Advice to United Way of America:

• Keep the pulse of what is happening. Keep us connected to the good ideas and best practices that are bubbling up throughout our system and elsewhere.
• Market the community-building system. Get all the United Ways to support the centrality of community building.
• Keep soliciting and recruiting national partners who can connect their local affiliates with us. Help us see our unique position but common purpose in relation to other organizations and movements.

Mesa, Arizona
- Dan Duncan

"Building a Healthy Mesa," kicked off two years ago at a Mesa Speaks Conference that United Way and the Chamber of Commerce sponsored. It is a strategic enterprise of all the major institutions of Mesa. Through this movement, we arranged the entire city around intermediate schools by local neighborhoods through which residents can articulate their dreams and plot their courses to strengthen their communities.

United Way planning, resource gathering, and fund distribution are folded into this local community-driven process. "Building a Healthy Mesa" represents an investment of government and educational institutions, businesses, health and social agencies, and religious organizations to stimulate and work with local neighborhood associations to organize neighborhood assets, create neighborhood-friendly policies, initiate neighborhood run projects, and build neighborhood-based accountability systems.

Thoughts for colleagues:

• We see community building as critical to the revitalization and success of United Way. Through it, we are forming new relationships with residents at the neighborhood level.
• We need to treat member agencies as partners in the community-building process. United Way and the agencies need to transform themselves through the community-building process. We need to learn and change in interaction with the agencies as a total health and human care system.
• Through community building, United Ways are positioned to support not only social, but also local economic development. This position means United Way and its member agencies connect to and support local economic development organizations and efforts.

Thoughts for United Way of America:

• Help local United Ways position themselves as the community-building organizations. Communicate the tools, the experience, the effects that are emerging throughout the country.
• Focus on community building as a philosophy and a discipline. Don't get caught up in specific issues, for example, children, education, AIDS. Other organizations with whom we work can do much better than we at these.

Minneaopolis, Minnesota
- Terri Barreiro

Through Success By 6, we began to see our extended role as catalyst and convener for community-initiated action. We completed a strategic planning process through which we elicited community vision in six areas. Then, we developed a team for each area to further the planning process. Each team comprises one-third agency people, one-third community people, and one-third seasoned volunteers. We are learning that we have overused professional solutions rather than local community-driven solutions. Underlying and connecting all six areas was the importance of local community, not only as a place of action, but also as the source of action. We are seeing the need to take our resources and reprogram them, so that they truly build local community capacity.

Some thoughts for colleagues:

• We need to be clear about the results we want, for example, community-based outcomes, collaboration.
• Involve the agencies in the process, so that they are brought along with the new directions. We find it important to meet often with agency executives, board members, and line-staff.

Some thoughts for United Way of America:

• The UWA Task Force on Impact is very helpful and has helped us and our agencies turn to an outcomes approach.
• UWA can help us identify national trends and connect us to national capacities in community building.
• Possible role for UWA is to develop the capacity for engaging us in a dialogue on national issues that affect our local communities, for example, welfare reform.

Nashville, Tennessee
- Doug Anderson

Our community building converges from two directions:

• We have just implemented a new allocations process. We now call ourselves a Community Solutions Fund. We are completing a very extensive, comprehensive, and sophisticated community assessment that identifies needs, resources, and gaps. We are in forming from six to eight community solutions councils. Membership is open to all who want to develop an outcome-based plan. Our funding will be limited only to those organizations that are part of a plan to make a difference in the areas the community wants to strengthen.
  
• We have been establishing a Community Strengths Task Force composed of broad-based leadership that focuses on what residents are doing and want to do. This task force focuses United Way resources on finding and supporting indigenous efforts. We will be able to apply some of the methodologies that we are learning through this task force to our reorganized allocations process.

These directions position us squarely in line with the donors for whom we have become the hero. We no longer have agency entitlements. We no longer have member agencies. All people and all organizations are invited to participate in taking responsibility for community solutions. This new direction strengthens our campaign message and offers new ways to involve donors.

Advice to colleagues:

• Be prepared for reaction if you make substantial change. Be willing to put up with attacks and to spend lots of time addressing them.
• Once you have determined a direction and built the constituency for it, stick with it. Learn, modify, but don't go back.

Advice to United Way of America:

• Through UWA, we need to stay in touch with each other as we try new things, so we can keep learning from each other. We can use what others have that works and avoid some of the pitfalls.
• United Way of America can communicate to us what ideas and techniques others are finding useful and keep us involved in a conversation. As we try new things, we need a place to call to raise our comfort level.

New Orleans, Loisiana
- Beth Terry

We got into community building through a collaborative experience in which a number of organizations, funders, providers, and service recipients partnered to support the homeless. We established a partnership with clear, measurable outcomes and a sunset provision to assess the progress of the organization. Each of the partners brought resources to the table to be used in common. Through this successful experiment and other initiatives, we saw the need to expand and renew our whole approach.

We are now engaged with community volunteers, funders, and providers in a six-parish planning process. We collected data relevant to the health of social systems and identified assets on which to build, as well as deficiencies. We surveyed large numbers of citizens by telephone and providers by written questionnaires. Using this information, we worked with volunteers and service providers to establish goal areas and action plans. We have already established teams in two action areas. Our emphasis is on developing clear community outcomes that relate to the indicators of healthy communities.

Advice to colleagues:

• Don't give up. Community building takes time and patience.
• Celebrate milestones along the way. Otherwise, the task can seem too overwhelming.
• Work together to establish milestones or benchmarks, so you can truly see whether progress is being made.

Advice to United Way of America:

• Integrate the community building, outcomes, and neighborhood development approaches. This will concentrate more of the resources.
• Keep helping us and our people educate ourselves in the developing technology of community building.

Omaha, Nebraska
- Jim Sullivan

In March 1994, the United Way of the Midlands organized a Human Service Roundtable. Through this roundtable, funders and providers decided where we needed to concentrate our resources and energies. This roundtable positioned United Way in the role of convener and a vehicle for public and private organizations intent on strengthening the local human service system. Hence, our functions are linked to a concentrated, comprehensive planning effort.

The state of Nebraska is engaged in the Nebraska Partnership which is a major redesign of the state's human services delivery system. The Human Services Roundtable is one of three "pilot partners" in the state, covering the Omaha metropolitan area. The partnership itself presents tremendous challenges because agencies, unions, and governments often see themselves as besieged or threatened, for example, with cuts. They are in a mode of reaction and maintenance rather than one of new thinking and new opportunities.

As a partner with the state, the Human Services Roundtable this fall will enter into negotiated agreements for defined outcomes and performance indicators on which progress can be measured.

Advice to colleagues:

• Keep the agencies involved to alleviate their anxieties and to have a stake in the outcomes.
• Recognize the complexity, the many agendas, and be patient with moving the total system.

Advice to United Way of America:

• Organize more resources for community building. UWA has qualified staff, but they are spread too thin. UWA needs to exercise more leadership and be able to provide that leadership to the local United Ways.

Rochester, New York
- Bill McCullough

Several initiatives have been moving us to a community building approach. For instance, we were early involved in establishing a Leadership Roundtable. Also, the Annie Casey Foundation funded us as a New Future's City. Through Success By 6, we earmarked a million dollars to initiate a comprehensive service collaborative focused on results. We are following this initiative with the development of a school-aged youth collaborative. Through an association, we targeted dollars on a capital campaign for the settlement houses. In all of these initiatives, we are focusing dollars and energy in collaborations that build local community capacity.

We are learning that:

• True collaboration is not easy. To be effective, it has to be at all levels —chief executive, middle management, and customers. You cannot force collaboration. You have to encourage and provide incentives.
• How we fund discourages cross-sector, comprehensive, and collaborative planning. We complain about fragmentation, but then fund individual programs and agencies around specific problems.
• The community-building approach demands new understanding and skills that are unfamiliar to many of us in our system.

United Way of America can help by:

• Skill-building. Identify the professionals in the field who are doing it and can help. Gather best practices. Clarify reasonable expectations.
• Mobilizing a national agenda in community building.

The United Way system is unique. We can play a role that no one else can play today in gathering and concentrating community resources for community effect.

Sacramento, California
- Janet Self

We redefined our mission to put community building at the heart of all we do. To begin the process of redefining us in action, we took two of our five counties as test models. We put United Way truly in the hands of local leaders by facilitating a process for them to shape how United Way would work in their communities. Thus, we were able to partner with all kinds of organizations, hospitals and businesses, education and county government, and nonprofit agencies not as fundees, but as partners in a process of accomplishing what is best in the community.

The experience has been powerful, but unpredictable. It has required us to be flexible, to live with uncertainty, to not necessarily know what the next steps will be. We start with defined principles that unify us, but then push beyond the former rules. It has opened us to a whole new set of partners and resources. Our campaign in these counties has increased appreciably. Although this has been powerful and we have learned a lot, it is still quite scary.

Now we are at the point of applying what we have learned to our total system —including the remaining three of our five counties. In Sacramento, we have been initiating the concept through some neighborhood development projects. This year is our last for using the concept of member agencies. Agencies are now partners, not recipients, who must bring their resources to the table.

Lessons we have learned:

• Community building is a most powerful approach, one through which United Way will be taken seriously in a new way.
• Through community building, community-based dollars, in the total equation although not large, can be most powerful. They leverage, match, initiate, and are often the first dollars to demonstrate community commitment.
• Community building means relationship building. That takes time. It is not a neat linear process. There is no recipe. It is a matter of value, attitude, will, and experiment. Therefore, it can seem overwhelming, time-consuming, and scary.

Advice to United Way of America:

• Don't try to be the makers, keepers, and translators of the definitions.
• Promote the action at the local level.
• Model what we are all learning to do.
• Stay out of the way and out of the limelight.
• Support our exchange of insight and interaction to support each other on the rocky road.
• Accelerate the process of learning through interaction and personal relationships among the people who are experimenting. This process speaks to a stronger regionalization of United Way, for example, the California Project, where the local United Ways can stimulate, sustain, teach, and support one another.

Saint Louis, Missouri
- Lotti Wade

We have been refining and clarifying our community-building role as we work in a number of initiatives. For example:

• We agreed with the state to be the fiscal agent for the Caring Communities Program in Saint Louis. This program links people in local communities to comprehensive school based social services.
  
• During the 1993 floods, we stepped up to the plate to coordinate services to communities through interagency councils. Those councils remain in some communities. The United Way is supporting their efforts to use the effective crisis responses as a springboard to tackle other community problems.
  
• Success By 640 collaborated with others to develop a Family Support Center in the Pinrose and O'Fallon neighborhoods. Board members of this center are people from the neighborhood who identified areas of need and how to address them. Similar efforts are developing throughout the Saint Louis area. A Family Support Council is gearing up to support those fledgling efforts —providing training, technical assistance, and connection to resources. The United Way houses the state-funded staff person and serves as fiscal agent.
  
• The Management Assistance Center is working with member agencies to strengthen their capacity to measure the impact and outcomes of their services.

We are learning that:

• We need to more effectively integrate community-building concepts as a function of the entire organization, including developing and allocating resources.
• We need to stick with it. Community building takes time and progresses unevenly.
• Personal credibility is essential. It means building relationships of trust with community people.

United Way of America can help by:

• Continuing to provide leadership, training, communication (including publications), and connection to others.
• Training with Kretzmann and McKnight was important. Now, we need ongoing consultation.

Schenectady, New York
- Susan Kramer

We see community building as multi-dimensional. We are organizing the investors, as well as public and private sources of funding, to develop a clearinghouse, common application processes and coordination around goals. With the assistance of a professional training institute, we are bringing our agencies into a learning process to build partnerships for clear, practical outcomes. We have transformed from a needs-assessment to a community-assessment process in which communities are articulating their vision, their emphases for action, and the outcomes they want. We are looking into collaboration, neighborhood-based planning, and community-driven outcomes in everything we do.

Lessons learned and advice to colleagues:

• Change the language. For example, change "funders" to "investors," "providers" to "implementers," "clients" to "customers." Such changes will help change perception and behavior.
• Listen. Help people at the grass roots know they are being heard and taken seriously.
• Bring staff, volunteers, and agencies along with you. Major change in attitude and approach is being asked of them. So, proceed with understanding and lots of educational opportunities.

Advice to United Way of America:

• Keep providing resources, information, institutions, initiatives in community building for local use.
• Challenge us to achieve the best. Avoid moving to the least common denominator simply to get consensus.

White Plains, New York
- Ralph Gregory

We are moving! We are trying to make community building the center of our organization. We are changing our traditional community-planning process, which has focused primarily on a few special projects. We have done away with our traditional distribution committees. Instead, we have created goal area committees—composed of volunteers and staff who function as a team —that work year-round. These teams are becoming experts by increasing their understanding of their respective goal areas, for example, strengthening families, nurturing children and youth; the capacities operating within each goal area; and the degree to which issues in each area are being effectively addressed. Also, they are bringing to the table all who might help achieve this impact, as well as determining the contributions each can make, including United Way. Previously, we focused about 80 percent of our efforts on agency operations when making allocations decisions. Now, we focus primarily on community impact.

Our challenges include:

• How do we meaningfully involve volunteers more fully in the community-building process? Generally, in the past, staff planned special projects then presented them for volunteer review. The distribution volunteers met mainly to hear agency presentations and decide on levels of funding based on history and the availability of funds. Now, we are asking volunteers to enter into a process that emphasizes listening to the community, identifying potential areas of impact, and determining United Way response.
  
• How can we move beyond the traditional agency relationship to a partnership with United Way? Most agencies are applauding the community-building concept in theory, especially its focus on issues and outcomes. In practice, many agencies continue to view themselves as recipients of United Way funds rather than as partners with us in a process of community change. Thus far, only about one-third of the agencies have been able to identify measurable outcomes.

Lessons and advice to colleagues:

• Evolution over revolution. Build on your strengths. Provide long-time volunteers and currently funded agencies the opportunity to become the nucleus of an effort to take United Way and the community to a new level. View the change process as a learning process for all. United Way in collaboration with Pace University recently established the Not-For-Profit Management Center. This center is serving as the focal point for this learning experience.
  
• On the other hand, don't drag out the process. Change the structure for decision making and action without endless discussion. We totally revamped our structure in about 2 1/2 months. Structural change, although not an end in itself, can refocus energies and facilitate new ways of thinking.

Advice to United Way of America:

• United Way of America, its staff, and committees are going down the right path. We need continued resources, think pieces, consultation, and opportunities to learn. Community building needs to achieve greater recognition at the board level, perhaps through a board committee that includes both key volunteer and professional leaders.

Recommendations for United Way of America

Based on what we are learning thus far, we recommend that United Way of America, which is all of us:

• Keep gathering community-building stories and lessons learned and communicating them throughout the system on both a face-to-face and written basis. Experimentation and communication throughout our system will strengthen the community-building agenda.
  
• Provide each other technical assistance. Connect local United Ways to one another. Share the wealth.
  
• Provide consultation and technical assistance through UWA. Make available the best training and consultation. Create long-term learning relationships, not just short-term workshops. Expedite the establishment of a center for community building that brings together the best people and ideas, provides high-quality education, and publishes journals, papers, and curricula for community building.
  
• Assist local United Ways in carrying out effective evaluations and document the effects of community building system-wide. Link the Community Building Committee with the Impact Committee and with the Economic Development Forum that met in Cincinnati.
  
• Foster collaborative support through UWA and the committee. Keep building connections to other systems that share community-building agenda, for example, National Civic League, Association of Neighborhood Funders, national training institutes, and economic development corporations.
  
• Review, revise, and renew the UWA strategic plan and directions to further strengthen the community-building thrust and include our new understandings.
  
• Restructure the Community-Building Committee as a joint Board and National Professional Council committee, adding volunteer leaders and reporting to the board, as well as to the National Professional Council. Use the Community-Building Committee as the vehicle for implementing the community building agenda and for organizing the UWA Center for Community Building.

Writing the Next Story-Making Chapter

We will write subsequent Story Making chapters on community-building together. Community building is a process, an unfinished story, with no final chapter. To keep the story going we, as a United Way of America committee, are committed to the following steps:

• Distribute this publication to our colleagues and partners.
  
• Follow up on requests for participation and assistance. Provide direct support to those local United Ways who want to pursue a community-building agenda.
  
• Establish an organ of information through which stories of local experiments and their lessons learned are communicated systemwide.
  
• Plan the next session of the committee to assemble colleagues who are leading the community-building effort, along with volunteer and agency leaders.
  
• Begin reworking and rewriting strategic directions for community building that elaborate on the UWA strategic plan based on our new experiences and understandings.

Community building represents a fundamental transformation of United Way as an organization and as a system, not additional programs. In one sense, this shift is a return to our roots. It reasserts the values of the settlement-house movement for social justice. It retrieves the values of federation of the social planning councils.

In another sense, this shift recognizes a fundamentally altered social reality. It recognizes the shift from a mass- to a knowledge-based economy; from a linear and closed organization to chaotic and open organization; from a second-wave industrial civilization to a third-wave information-based civilization.

That United Way is undergoing a major transformation there is little doubt. It is evident in our relationship with companies and unions, which are no longer pyramid-shaped monoliths, but decentralized product and profit centers. It is evident in our relationship with government, which has a strong, but narrowed, commitment to the social contract. It is evident in our relationship to agencies, which struggle to address the demands of professional specialization and business management with dwindling resources.

If United Way is to renew and thrive, we must transform. We can no longer do business as usual —run campaigns and distribute funds as though nothing has changed. We look beyond the agencies to their communities who hold them accountable. We look beyond the workplace to the place of living, worship, play, and action. We are learning that resource development is more than payroll-deduction; it is identifying, leveraging, and concentrating community assets.

If we put on our new community-building thinking cap, our opportunities are boundless. We will think beyond funding agencies and programs, to influencing and revitalizing systems. We will go beyond making projects that solve issues, to fostering relationships that create community. There is no greater calling.

Yet ours is a humble calling. We no longer are satisfied by cavorting with the leaders of institutions, but by advancing the leaders of community. We no longer pretend to be chief executives making the big decisions, rather we try to make space where citizens decide the shape of their community. We no longer claim to know. Although each of us moves at a different pace, we are each a part of the total system in which we are all connected and learning together —learning organizations within a learning community.

Acknowledgments

United Way of America StaffDebbie Foster
Martha Taylor Greenway
Curt Johnson
Nancy Mason
Don McKee
Jim Morrison
Eric Muschler
Laurie Ryan
Robbin Sorensen

Members of the National Professional Council Committee for United Way's Role for Community Building

Irving Lauber, Chair President Aloha United Way Honolulu, Hawaii	Carol Burger, President United Way of the Capital Area, Inc. Jackson, Miss.	Charmaine Chapman, President United Way of Greater St. Louis, Inc. St. Louis, Mo.
Susan Cotton, President United Way of Sacramento Area Sacramento, Calif.	H. Daniels Duncan, President Mesa United Way Mesa, Ariz.	Craig Dutra, Senior Vice President United Way of Massachusetts Bay, Inc. Boston, Mass.
Mark Germano, President United Way Fox Cities, Inc. Menasha, Wis.	Ralph Gregory, President United Way of Westchester & Putnam, Inc. White Plains, N.Y.	Michael McLarney, President United Way of the Midlands Omaha, Neb.
Mark O'Connell, President United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta Atlanta, Ga.	Gloria Pace-King, President United Way of Central Carolinas, Inc. Charlotte, N.C.	Hugh Parry, President United Way of Illinois Chicago, Ill.
Nona Thelen, President Capital Area United Way Baton Rouge, La.	Joe Tolan Executive Vice President Community Initiatives Metro United Way Louisville, Ky.

Index

Preface
Introduction
Historical and Political Background —Christopher Gates
Philosophy of Community Building — William Lofquist
Accountability in Community Building — Sidney Gardner
Principles of Community Building
Story-Making and Community Building
Recommendations for United Way of America
Writing the Next Story-Making

Back to Community Index