Ask the Expert Archive

AUGUST 2006

John Kretzmann, Co-Director, Asset-Based Community Development Institute, Northwestern University

John Kretzmann (Jody) is a researcher, trainer and author. He received a B.A. from Princeton University, an M.A. in English literature from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. in sociology and urban affairs from Northwestern University. He was a founding faculty member and director of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest Urban Studies Program; and he has taught at Northwestern University, Valparaiso University, and the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago.

Jody has been a community organizer in Chicago’s West Side, has consulted with a wide range of neighborhood organizing and development groups, and has worked to develop community-oriented public policy at the national, state, and local level. He serves on a wide range of civic, community, and foundation boards.

Michelle Dobbs, Vice President of The Leadership Practice

Michelle Dobbs recently returned to Public Allies to lead their new dissemination strategy by providing training and technical assistance to other organizations. Michelle was a founding staff member of Public Allies Milwaukee, where she served as director of training and learning from 1994–97. From 1997–2000, she served as national vice president of programs, where she led the effort to create Public Allies’ baselines, standards, and the continuous learning evaluation approach Public Allies uses to this day.

In between her time at Public Allies, Michelle was a corporate trainer and coach with ING Financial Services in Hartford, CT; an independent consultant; and a novelist (she is working on her second novel). Michelle is a graduate of Howard University with a B.A. in communications.

Revitalizing Communities: Shifting to Capacity-Focused Development
In the past, community renewal has been synonymous with needs mapping, the process by which outside agencies and organizations concentrate on deficiencies within communities. Although this approach works some of the time, one of the major drawbacks is that citizens are perceived as consumers of services, rather than full contributors to the community-building process. This results in encouraging a survival strategy among "clients" and fragmentation among providers. Additionally, in light of continuing budget restraints, it is unlikely that new inputs of federal money will be forthcoming soon, narrowing the abilities of social service agencies to make any large-scale impact.

Asset-based community development, on the other hand, is an alternative approach that leads to the advancement of policies and activities based on the capacities, skills, and abilities of lower income people and their neighborhoods—acknowledging and embracing the strong neighborhood-rooted traditions of community organizing, community economic development, and neighborhood planning. Employing this paradigm, outside resources, when utilized, will be used much more effectively because the local community is itself fully mobilized and invested and can define the agendas for which additional resources may be obtained.

Evidence suggests that significant community development takes place only when local community people are committed to investing themselves and their resources in the effort. The key to neighborhood regeneration is to locate all of the available local assets, connect them with one another in ways that multiply their proven power and effectiveness, and include those community institutions that have not yet been available for local development purposes.

Four Types of Assets within Communities
When working with asset-based community development, bear in mind that all communities share the following types of benefits:

• The skills of a community's residents—including those who have been labeled handicapped or disabled or those who are marginalized because
  they are too old, too young, or too poor.
• Citizens’ associations—vehicles through which citizens gather to solve problems or to share common interests and activities. These
  associations usually have religious, cultural, athletic, recreation and other purposes, beyond which they can be stretched.
• Formal institutions located in the community. These are private businesses and public institutions such as schools, libraries, parks,
  police and fire stations, nonprofits, hospitals. and social service agencies.
• Physical characteristics of a community and the strength of the local economy.

In summary, asset-based community development:

• Starts with what is present in the community—the skills and capacities of its residents and workers, associations and institutions—not what is absent or problematic.
• Is driven by relationships. Thus community developers must constantly seek to build and rebuild the relationships between and
  among local residents, associations, and institutions.

Effective Practices

• Strengthening rural economic development through a community action team
• Implementing a community development-oriented service-learning strategy
• Adopting community development approaches for collaboration

Lending Library Resources

• Guide to Evaluating Asset-Based Community Development
• Mobilizing Community Assets: The Video Training Program for Building Communities from the Inside Out

Online Publications

• Community Building in Logan Square: How a Community Grew Stronger with the Contributions of People with Disabilities (PDF)
• From Clients to Citizens: Asset-Based Community Development as a Strategy for Community-Driven Development (DOC)

This article is adapted from Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets, with the permission of John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight (Evanston, IL: Institute for Policy Research 1993), 1–11.

Read more about asset-based community development in Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets, by John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight