Improve Community Relations
Do community members feel your organization and its services make a difference in their lives?
Answer the questions below to find out.
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Do you regularly seek out community feedback and perspective about your services?
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Do you consistently reach out and provide your community stakeholders with updates and information?
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Do you actively engage in community activities and build relationships with your community constituents?
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Can you show how you used the community’s feedback to improve the organization’s performance?
If you don’t know if your service makes a difference for your community or cannot answer the above questions in the affirmative, it’s time to check the temperature -- your community’s temperature regarding your organization’s impact and effectiveness. We all have times when we get caught up in the “doing” of daily business without stopping to consider the “why” of what we do. Making a difference is what really matters…not only does it measure your organization’s abilities and impact, but it feels good. To help improve your programmatic impact with your community, consider the suggested resources below.
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Books & Resources
- Creating Sustainable Community Programs: Examples of Collaborative Public Administration
 by Mark R. Daniels (Praeger Publishers 2001).
“Daniel's collection of examples of sustainable community development is wide-ranging and most of the papers provide insights into the practice of community development in many facets. The book is useful not only for students of public administration but also for practitioners.”
–Development Policy Review
- “Principles for Partnership” by James E. Austin in On High Performance Organizations: A Leader to Leader Guide
 edited by Frances Hesselbein and Rob Johnston (Jossey-Bass 2002).
“On High-Performance Organizations features the best thinking from top experts on organizational effectiveness, sustaining growth, and strategy. Written in a concise style that is ideal for the busy executive with little spare time, the book presents a stellar roster of contributors. On High-Performance Organizations is one title in the Leader to Leader Guides, which draw from the most compelling articles that have appeared in Leader to Leader, the Drucker Foundation's award-winning journal.”
- Promoting Community Change: Making it Happen in the Real World
 by Mark S. Homan (Brooks Cole 2007).
“Learn the skills that will allow you to improve the lives of not only individual clients, but of entire communities, with PROMOTING COMMUNITY CHANGE. This text addresses the real world issues facing social work, human services, and community health professionals who want to take the theoretical discussion of community forward and realize tangible community changes. As you progress through the text, you'll learn to identify the issues related to change and discover exactly how you can become an effective agent of change. Author Mark Homan emphasizes the role a strengthened community can play in preventing and solving the problems that individuals and families commonly experience, and gives you the tools to organize empowering local actions bringing clients, families, and other community members into an active role in building a healthier community for themselves, their families, and their neighbors.”
- Please visit our Community Initiatives and Multi-Cultural Marketing pages to learn how we can help you.
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