The Community Organizer Assessment is one of four Plan Modules available to jump-start a strategic planning effort. While we recommend our full planning services as described on the Strategic Planning Process page, we realize that a targeted approach is a better fit for certain communities.

EDSP Module 3: Community Organizer Assessment

Community Organizer Assessment

Question: Can we implement our plan?

Challenge: Assessing the community's capacity to advance a strategic plan.

Action: Participate in the Community Organizer Assessment

Result: Findings, observations and recommendations useful to the community for increasing its capacity to engage in economic development activities

The Building Communities’ Community Organizer Assessment helps a community ask itself, “What can our community accomplish in terms of community and economic development?” This analysis relates to the human, financial and technical resources available to implement projects and initiatives deemed important by the community.

The assessment addresses basic community and economic development fundamentals such as:

Do we have an organization that is focused on such development activities? Is it adequately funded? Is funding stable?
Do we have adequate staffing to do the work? Is the staff trained? Is the volunteer board trained?
Do we have a good connection between the priorities of the community and the priorities of the development organization (if it exists at all)?
Do we have an adequate marketing and public relations budget? Is it targeted at our priorities?
What is the attitude of the community toward growth and development?
Do we have available land, buildings and infrastructure to facilitate the growth of our community? If not, how long will it take to put these fundamentals in place?
What specific business development approaches are we able to conduct? Which ones should we conduct?
What experience do we have in closing business development deals? What additional skills or training do we need?
Is our community optimistic or pessimistic about its future? How does this help or hinder community and economic development?

These are but a small subset of the questions we ask. The answer to one question triggers different questions, which then yield a report on the current capacity a community has/doesn’t have to accomplish community and economic development work.

This session can be administered to a very broad or very narrow group of community leaders. Although the questions are most targeted to city managers, county managers or commissioners, community and economic development professionals and chamber of commerce executives, the entire Steering Committee can benefit from hearing and understanding the dialogue around capacity.

The Community Organizer Assessment is the most basic of the Building Communities tools. Without the fundamental capacity to accomplish development objectives, selecting strategies and assigning actions steps is a fruitless task.

Contact us today to begin assessing the real and needed capacity of your community so it can effectively do strategic planning.