CCESL Community Organizing Handbook
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Community organizing is about building the capacity of a community to address a problem by identifying and attacking its root causes.

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Although organizing is often thought of as a tool for progressive or liberal organizations, its tools and concepts are non-partisan. Anyone seeking to make change in their community can use the tools of community organizing, no matter whether they are focused on grassroots, neighborhood-level issues or city-wide community and economic development strategies. read more

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Expectation Setting
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Institutionalize relationship building with potential leaders

GOPC will document the efforts of economic development organizations to retain local jobs and local talent by building relationships with managers and executives from companies with a presence in the community. These meetings are especially important for setting expectations that they will be a part of the city’s civic fabric, even if they do not plan to stay in the community long-term. read more

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Engage Students
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A key component of strong civic capacity is a robust pipeline for new talent.

Many smaller legacy cities are facing the dual challenge of population loss and an aging workforce. Other cities that have seen an influx of immigrant populations are struggling to incorporate young people from different cultural backgrounds into their leadership cohort. In either case, communities can approach the challenge of building a talent pipeline by engaging young people, particularly high school students, to give them a better sense of local opportunities. read more

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Seek Supplemental Capacity
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Sometimes, resources from outside of a community can help to build local capacity for the long-term.

A number of federal programs seek to build capacity in distressed communities, either directly or indirectly. The Strong Cities, Strong Communities (SC2) initiative, a program of the Obama Administration, worked in specific communities to align the resources of 19 federal agencies toward building local capacity. read more

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Neighborhood Improvement Projects
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Empowering residents is an important aspect of building strong civic capacity.

Residents who feel that they have the ability to impact their neighborhood and their city are more likely to be satisfied with where they live and contribute their time, skills, and resources to broader revitalization efforts. Small, inexpensive neighborhood projects can give residents the opportunity to impact their community in a positive way, while also building up neighborhood capacity to tackle even larger challenges. read more

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Self-Interest
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Concepts from the field of community organizing can be useful for leaders hoping to build momentum to make change in their communities. 

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Community organizing is the process of bringing people together to make systemic change, which is ultimately what leaders in small legacy cities are seeking to do as they work to build up their community’s capacity to prosper in the twenty-first century economy. read more

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Civic Capacity Roundtable Key Findings
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Key-Learnings on Civic Capacity from a Roundtable of Experts and Practitioners

Greater Ohio Policy Center, in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, convened a roundtable of experts and practitioners to discuss building civic capacity in smaller legacy cities. Many of the resources in the “building civic capacity” and “encourage a shared vision” sections were uncovered during that roundtable or provided by roundtable participants [a full list of whom are listed in the acknowledgements section]. read more

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Asset-Based Community Development Institute
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Asset-based community development (ABCD) is a model for community empowerment and change that is focused on building and leveraging capacity in disinvested neighborhoods.

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ABCD approaches communities with the belief that all places – even those that have experienced disinvestment – have significant assets in the form of their people, associations, and institutions. ABCD seeks to shift the focus away from neighborhood deficits in order to empower residents to strengthen and leverage their assets to make positive change. read more

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Place-Based Fellowships
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Place-based fellowship programs can help strengthen the pipeline for filling key leadership roles in smaller legacy cities’ civic sector.

These programs seek to recruit top talent into public or civic-sector roles by providing fellows, who are typically recent graduates, with the opportunity to do impactful, high-level work early in their careers. Although fellowship positions are short-term, the goal of these programs is to retain talent in the community, even if not at the agency where the fellowship took place. read more

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