I’m starting week three of my coursework on Social Impact Strategy and I’m in sponge mode, just trying to soak it all up. There’s so much good stuff, it’s hard to choose what to write about. One particular reading stood out, though, around how to build community. The reading comes from this book.
The three authors, J. Gregory Dees, Jed Emerson and Peter Economy, define community as a group of individuals who decide that as a collection association, they can self-identify through shared experiences, values, goals, and a sense of purpose in history (there’s that purpose word again!).
My key takeaways:
All human beings need community in one form or another
It is easy for bureaucracies to define and identify “a community” but only rarely do those labels come close to matching the self-designated ideas of a group
Both the creation and implementation of ideas for reform must be accountable, ultimately, to those most directly affected.
It struck me how critical and central the idea of community is to social impact. The authors talk about the importance of social entrepreneurs needing to be particularly alert to see need and capacity through community eyes. They also emphasize the importance of finding the community guides – in other words, who are those with local wisdom and inside knowledge? Who knows the history? Who has the twist of the locals?
I found these questions incredibly thought provoking for the work of social impact. Building community goes back to one fundamental principle that is particularly relevant for marketing and communications folks like me – listen first.
More to come as we move into topics around performance measurement, funding, and scaling up for impact.
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