Tools for Building Community

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Tools for Building Community:
A Report on the State of the Art

Practical new methods designed for local citizens are redefining what's possible in American communities.

by LARRY LEMMEL, Center for Consensual Democracy

Editor's Note: REM team builders' members are reviewing and adapting some of the tools developed by the Center for Consensual Democracy for use by Mid-Maine citizens. If you'd like to be a part of this effort, please contact Community Building Editor Faye Nicholson at 873-4444, or write to her at rem@rem1.org.

Browsing the shelves of my local bookstore recently, I found many books about what’s wrong with local communities and a few that suggest what should be done to improve them. But I searched in vain for a single volume on how local citizens can achieve civic renewal projects or goals. What’s going on here?

As every gardener, woodworker and homemaker knows, the building process takes three things: a vision of the finished product, a strategy or plan for how to use the tools we need, and the skill to use the tools effectively. Our common experience confirms this: eggbeaters; hammers and pipe wrenches are reliable tools that produce good results every time. Having these tools and knowing how to use them makes it possible for us to develop strategies to achieve the results we want.

But when we gardeners, woodworkers and homemakers come together to build community, there’s often a disconnect between visions, strategies and tools. From talking with hundreds of local citizens, I know that many have beautiful and inspiring visions of their communities. But almost none have strategies for achieving these visions. What’s missing are the tools to achieve the visions and the skill to use these tools effectively. Sad to say, this is part of the state of the art at the dawn of the 21st century.

The American Tradition

Faced with the daunting task of building a national community, our Founding Fathers began their new Constitution with this noble vision:

"We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, pro-vide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Then they gave us a set of powerful tools for achieving and sustaining this vision: tools that define the powers of government, create laws to protect life and property, enforce these laws by police or military action, and finance the government through broad-based taxation. We have used this strategy, and these tools, to achieve and sustain our national vision for more than two centuries.

Building local communities, by contrast, requires a local vision and reliable tools that local citizens can use effectively. Although many communities have visions, few have workable strategies or effective tools for achieving them. This, too, is part of the state of the art at the dawn of the 21^st century.

But in some American communities, local citizens are learning to use powerful new tools to achieve and sustain their common visions. These tools establish democratic "governments of the people," create goals and priorities, and help people work together openly, cooperatively and democratically. For over fifty years this approach to community building, known as "Consensual Democracy," has been effective in building strong, vital communities.

Choosing the Right Tools

What keeps many communities from adapting new community-building tools? The biggest obstacle is a continued reliance on tools designed for use by businesses or governments but not by local citizens. The meager results these tools produce only confirms what every woodworker knows: the best eggbeater in the world isn’t effective for driving nails into wood!

But if you’re ready to choose new tools for building community, what to you look for? These questions will help you evaluate tools for use in your own community:

Is the tool inexpensive to acquire and maintain over time?
Is it useful by large numbers of citizens, or only by paid consultants and highly trained professionals?
Is it available whenever local citizens need it, as often as needed, and by whomever needs it?
Is it reliable, that is, capable of producing the results you want every time, when properly used?
Can local citizens learn to use it easily and quickly?
Is it fast and efficient in getting the specific results we want?

Community-Building Tools You Can Use Now

Here’s the good news: effective, reliable tools that meet the above criteria are available now. Many of them have been developed by Dr. Michael Kelly and his colleagues at Advanced Management Catalyst, Inc. in Wiscasset, Maine. The Center for Consensual Democracy has tested all of the following tools over the past nine years and found them effective for building community, when used openly, cooperatively and democratically. We describe them here according to the results they can be depended on to achieve:

A tool to identify the values and standards of behavior essential for building community
A tool to create a shared vision of a community’s future
A tool to develops a plan of action to achieve a civic vision
A tool to create a democratic structure to organize and support local citizens
A tool to identify the most essential tasks for achieving a civic vision
A tool to prioritize civic objectives
A tool to create "forum-type" media that promote the free exchange of civic information and opinion.
A tool to determine the current stage of accomplishment of civic objectives
A tool to measure progress toward accomplishing civic objectives
A tool to identify bottlenecks to progress
A tool to help allocating community resources
A tool to create broad-based financial support for achieving a vision
A tool to design and guide the achievement of civic projects
A tool to supports local citizens in working together openly, cooperatively and democratically.

What the Future Holds

The tools on this list represent just the beginning of what will be available in the next few years. Tools develop and improve as ingenious people experiment with how to use them and apply them to new situations. If our work is successful, the shelves of my local bookstore will be transformed: titles such as What’s Wrong with American Communities? will be long out of print, and How to Use The Best Community-Building Tools will be a national best seller!

Larry Lemmel is Chair of the nonprofit Center for Consensual Democracy, which develops and tests new tools for building community and works with local communities to achieve their visions, values and goals. He is co-author of Recreating Democracy: Breathing New Life into American Communities.

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