Community Organizing: Building Social Capital as a Development Strategy

207 Pages·1998·15.695 MB·English

by  Ross J. Gittell, Avis C. Vidal

Community
Organizing
This book is dedicated
to the volunteers in this program,
and the thousands like them
in communities across the country,
who are comitting themselves
to make the nation 's cities better places to live,
and to our families.
Community
Organizing
Building Social Capital as a
Development Strategy
Ross Gittell · Avis Vidal
®
SAGE Publications
InternationalEducational'andProfessionalPublisher
Thousand Oaks London New Delhi
Copyright © 1998 by Sage Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information stor-
age and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information:
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Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gittell, RossJ., 1957-
Community organizing: Building social capital as a development
strategy / by Ross Gittell and Avis Vidal.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8039-5791-2 (cloth: acid-free paper). — ISBN
0-8039-5792-0 (pbk.: acid-free paper)
1. Community development—United States—Case studies.
2. Community development corporations—United States—Case studies.
3. Community organization—United States—Case studies. I. Vidal,
Avis. II. Title.
HN90.C6G57 1998
307.1 '4'0973—dc21 97-45463
98 99 00 01 02 03 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Acquiring Editor: Catherine Rossbach
Editorial Assistant: Kathleen Derby
Production Editor: Diana E. Axelsen
Editorial Assistant: Denise Santoyo
Typesetter/Designer: Danielle Dillahunt
Indexer: Virgil Diodato
Cover Designer: Candice Harman
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments ix
1. Introduction 1
The LISC National Demonstration Program 2
Learning From the LISC National Demonstration 8
2. Social Capital and Networks in Commmunity Development:
Framing the LISC Demonstration 13
Social Capital and Community Development 14
Conceptual Model of Community Development 23
3. A Social Capital Perspective on Community
Development Practice 33
Community Development Corporations (CDCs) 33
Comprehensive Community Initiatives and Community
Development 39
Federal Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities 47
Community Organizing as a Community Development Strategy 51
4. Getting Off to a Good Start:
Positioning the Program in the Field 57
Objectives and Strategy 58
Activities to Implement the Strategy 62
Findings From the Implementation Experience 63
Lessons 79
5. Organizing CDCs and Developing
Indigenous Leadership 83
Objectives and Strategy 83
Activities to Implement the Strategy 85
Findings From the Implementation Experience 87
Lessons 102
6. Building Relationships With the Private Sector 105
Objectives and Strategy 105
Activities to Implement the Strategy 106
Findings From the Implementation Experience 109
Lessons 121
7. Transition and Its Consequences 125
Objectives and Strategy 125
Activities to Implement the Strategy 127
Findings From the Implementation Experience 129
Lessons 140
8. Lessons: Building Social Capital 145
Key Aspects of Successful Community Development
Interventions: Lessons From the LISC
Demonstration Program 146
Broader Reflections 174
References 181
Index 185
About the Authors 195
Preface
M
any program evaluations—especially those (like this one) that rely
heavily on program participants for their information, and that are
supported financially by funders who also supported the intervention
under study and who are publicly identified with it—are mainly descriptive and
focus almost exclusively on positive outcomes. This rendering of one initiative's
experience is not. It is both detailed and analytical, because we believe that
getting inside the workings of an innovative program and understanding the
thinking that guides the actions of the participants provides rich learning
opportunities. We have tried to capitalize on those opportunities in our analysis.
In the process, we have tried to depict the program and its participants fairly and
honestly and to help readers learn from their failures as well as their successes.
The examination of experience in the three sites, which forms the core of the
book, illustrates the complexity and difficulty of community development.
Although the basic description of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation
(LISC) demonstration program often appears straightforward, program imple-
mentation is multifaceted, strategic, and sometimes even artful. It clearly re-
quires hard work and high levels of commitment on the part of staff, members
of the support community, and resident volunteers.
That there were some setbacks, and even some failures, is disappointing—
sometimes even painful, most especially to those most directly affected by
them—but it is not surprising. Community development is challenging, pains-
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viii COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
taking work; the people and organizations who invest in trying to strengthen its
practice know better than any evaluator that the road is rocky. Deepening our
understanding of the initiative's many strengths has been a fascinating and
rewarding process. Pondering its shortcomings has been a sobering and hum-
bling experience as well. It teaches the lesson that criticizing the mistakes of
others is vastly easier than figuring out how to do this hard work better.
Acknowledgments
I
n pursuing a long and ambitious project like this one, authors accumulate
many debts. While it is impossible to credit every source of support and
inspiration we received, a few people were so helpful that we want to single
them out.
The book took shape at the lively and stimulating setting of the Community
Development Research Center at the New School for Social Research, New York.
Here we benefited from close contact with our colleagues and with leading com-
munity development practitioners, especially Mike Sviridoff and Mark Willis, who
took an early and active interest in the project. We especially want to acknow-
ledge the outstanding research assistance provided by Karen Courtney and the skill
and unfailing good humor of Eric Feliciano, who helped prepare the manuscript.
Our research would not have been possible without the active cooperation of
the program participants. We thank them for being generous with their time,
patience, and insights over the five-year period of our investigations, and we
respect them for the commitment, concern and talent they bring to their impor-
tant work. Of particular help were Michael Eichler, Richard Barrera, Reggie
Harley, and Mary Ohmer, at the Consensus Organizing Institute (COI); and
Richard Manson, Rob Fosse, Jim Mercado, and Jennifer Can* at Local Initiatives
Support Corporation (LISC). They contributed greatly to our efforts, and we
learned a great deal from them. We are especially grateful to Michael Eichler;
his conviction that the assessment was important to do was essential to our
ix