Giving Compass' Take:

• The Annie E. Casey Foundation highlights learnings from the Urban Institute about factors that impact community development efforts.

• How can funders work to ensure that community development efforts account for external factors? 

• Read about using data for community development. 

The Urban Institute found that even the most effective community development initiatives may have to navigate structural challenges that extend beyond their borders, including lack of affordable housing, employment uncertainty, inadequate transportation, enduring deficits in child care and educational resources and an unpredictable policy environment. Specifically, the Urban Institute concluded that:

  • External factors can play a major role in influencing the success of a community development initiative. In the three communities, some of these factors — like strong existing partnerships with local elementary schools — were positive. But others, like the local effects of the national housing crisis and uncertainty about immigration policy on the federal level, acted as roadblocks.
  • Local public officials and organizations can navigate external obstacles through adaptation. As a response to the growing affordable housing crisis, Buffalo ramped up eviction prevention services and affordable housing initiatives. Columbus worked with local partners to improve early care and education for young children. San Antonio focused on improving academic outcomes in local elementary schools by strengthening partnerships with the local school district and workforce system.
  • Partnerships should understand societal influences beyond their control — from inadequate local transportation to affordable housing shortages — and plan around them to craft an effective two-generation approach.
  • Partnerships should build local coalitions that foster policy advancement on a community level to maintain and promote progress in the face of an unpredictable national policy landscape.

Read the full article about community development efforts at The Annie E. Casey Foundation.