Apathy is the source of nearly every community problem, and until it is addressed, progress is impossible. No amount of planning or funding can make people care about their community. In this phase, we will have frank and honest conversations about a community’s struggles, so we can begin to understand what challenges lie ahead.

Communities are a collection of people, businesses and all the common spaces in between. The success of every entity in a community is dependent on the place in which they all share. It does, after all, take a village.

This process brings together community stakeholders to have honest conversations about what it takes to revitalize and develop a consensus vision about what people want and what it will take to get there. From this new collective effort, we will work together to create a sustainable, community based organization to oversee the revitalization process.

The road to revitalization failure is paved with good intentions. We make the mistake of believing we have to ask less of volunteers in hopes of attracting a larger pool. This is the quickest way to ensure a board built on apathy.

Revitalization is the most important thing we can do for our communities and therefore we must demand so much more from our volunteers. We must build a badass board from the best and the brightest. We must become a community of doers.

By evaluating board roles and responsibilities and developing a new set of expectations, we will set appropriate standards that meet the high expectation your mission demands.

The process of improving requires rallying residents to action and connecting expertise to opportunity. During this phase, we bring residents together around previously identified initiatives and coordinate outside experts to bring their particular skill sets to the community.

The mission of your revitalization organization has the ability to affect every single person in the community, but all too often those mission statements go unmet. It’s time to align your aspirations with your actions and start doing the work your organization is capable of and the community desperately needs.

By taking a candid approach to strategic planning, we cut out wasted time and effort and get to the point. Through this process we will assess if your mission statement is appropriate, and update it if needed. We will identify short-term goals and long-term aspirations. We will decide who is in charge of each identified project and align accountability measures to ensure the work gets carried out.

Apathy is always waiting in the shadows to take hold again. It is critical that a community is vigilant in terms of maintaining its new standards and ensure this doesn’t happen. This phase is recognition that a community has successfully achieved recovery and is working to protect that progress.