Bringing Community Leaders Together – A Step-by-Step Guide on LikeMinded

in community engagement, Free Libraries Online

One of the huge benefits of adopting “community building” as a hobby is that from time to time, you get to volunteer to work with real organizers. Early this year, I started to help the Council of Acorn Residents on a project they hoped would bring leaders and orgs in West Oakland more closely together. Dubbed “Solutions Salons”, the idea was to get community leaders together – with food, drink, music, and conversation – and hope something good would come of that. Like the salons of the Enlightenment, but without the hoopskirts. Initial results have been encouraging (see Oakland Local article reprinted with permission below).

The residents wanted to document the process we’re going through, so if you’d want to try it in your own neighborhood, you’d have a model you can use and improve upon. We created a project on LikeMinded called (very modestly) “Bringing Community Leaders Together – A Step-by-Step Guide“. It includes a timeline, and sample invitations, evaluations, surveys, and other docs that can give you a head start. This process has just begun, and we welcome your ideas on how to move it forward.

If you haven’t heard of LikeMinded, it’s the new platform Craigslist Foundation and the Knight Foundation launched last month, where people can share stories about what’s working to help improve communities. You can read more press reports about it here.

We’ll get into this in more detail during our “Someone’s Done That Already: the Best Practice of Using Best Practices” session of the June 2 Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp on Empowering Communities at UCSF.

Community groups make connection in West Oakland

by Jennifer Inez Ward (@oaklandscene), Oakland Local (@oaklandlocal)

Residents, community organizations and business owners gathered at the Acorn Town Center and Courtyards late last week to discuss better ways of networking and communicating as part of the Solutions Salon for West Oakland Leaders.

The event was sponsored by the Council of Acorn Residents and was the second meeting held to specifically look at new ways West Oaklanders can come together. Organizers said they wanted participants to have an opportunity to brainstorm ideas about events or projects that can foster stronger ties in the community (photos).

BRIDGE Housing and The John Stewart Company also co-sponsored the salon, which featured a wide array of West Oakland groups. Participants at the meeting included members of The Crucible, People’s Grocery and the Alameda County Youth Development office. Educators also were at the gathering including the head of the soon to open charter school, Vincent Academy.

Many organization representatives and business owners said one of the biggest challenges (more…)

11 Drivers of Community Attachment – Ranked. Findings from “Soul of the Community”, a Gallup/Knight study

in community engagement, Free Libraries Online

The goal of the Knight Foundation-Gallup Soul of the Community project is to explore how community qualities influence residents’ feelings about where they live, and how those perceptions relate to local economic growth and vitality.

Gallup interviewed a group of randomly selected adults age 18 or older, currently residing in each of the 26 Knight Foundation Communities. Interviews took place from February 17th through April 26, 2009. The interview was approximately 18 minutes long and covered 86 questions. The sample for each community was a representative selection of residential household telephone numbers in the defined area. Once a household within the identified area was reached, Gallup randomly selected one adult within the sampled household. Each county within a community was sampled proportionally to the adult population in each area. About 400 citizen interviews were completed in most of the Knight communities – 28,000 nationwide, over the past two years.

CA Map

Main findings

Overall, 24% of citizens are attached to the community in which they live; 40% are not attached.

Gallup identified two key components of Community Attachment (CA):

  1. Attitudinal Loyalty, describes citizens’ general satisfaction with place, their likelihood to recommend it to others, and their outlook for their community’s future.
    1. 60% of respondents were satisfied with their community (25% highly satisfied)
    2. 57% were like to recommend it to others (30% very likely)
    3. 44% had a positive outlook for their community (17% very positive)
  2. Passion, captures the connection to place and the pride taken in living there.
    1. 66% of respondents are proud to live in their community (38% very proud)
    2. 57% believe their community is perfect for them (29% feel this strongly)

Gallup also identified five key dimensions (domains) of community, and a citizen’s connection to it, which drive overall CA. These five domains describe perceptions of:

  1. the basic structural, economic, and leadership offerings of the community (what the community gives or offers its residents),
  2. perceptions of the community’s openness to different groups (what the community stands for in diversity),
  3. citizen involvement in the community (what citizens give back to the community),
  4. the people connections they have to that community (how citizens belong to the community), and
  5. citizen’s personal state of well being (how the person feels and copes in the environment).

CA ModelCommunities which are strong on all five domains (and thus have high overall attachment) have the greatest opportunity to attract and retain the most desirable citizens for driving economic and social success. Each Domain has a different level of impact on CA. These domains were further broken out into eleven aspects, which affected a resident’s attachment to the community. Together, these domains explain about 40% of the overall variance in CA (based on logistic regression). So if we can move (i.e. improve) these 11 aspects (and more specifically the ones with the highest influence) we should be able to move CA.

In descending order:

  1. Openness – Perceptions of openness of the community to different groups (older people, racial and ethnic minorities, families with kids, gays and lesbians, talented college graduates, immigrants)
  2. Social Offerings – Vibrant night life; good place to meet people; other people care about each other
  3. Aesthetics – Parks, playgrounds, and trails; beauty or physical setting
  4. Education – Quality of public schools (K-12), colleges, and universities
  5. Basic Services – Highways and freeway system, availability of quality healthcare, availability of affordable housing
  6. Leadership – Community leaders represent residents’ interests; leadership of elected city officials
  7. Economy – Economic conditions & prospects, job opportunities, income
  8. Emotional Wellness – The personal well being of citizens (respect, rest, stress, learning)
  9. Safety – Level of community crime; safe to walk within 1 mile of home
  10. Social Capital – The people-connections citizens have to the community and how they share time with others (belong to formal/informal groups/clubs; spend time with neighbors; close friends in community; family in community)
  11. Civic Involvement – What residents give to the community in terms of civic involvement (volunteer; voted in local election; attend local community meetings; work with residents to make change)

Key Attachment Drivers

Learn more: 2009 – Full Report(PDF), 2009 – Presentation(PPT), 2009 – Data (ZIP, DOC, POR – asks for email)