Community Planning, Resilience, and Sustainability

Programs designed to guide planning efforts that result in documents describing the mission, vision, goals, objectives, strategies and action plans developed through a participatory process. Planning processes range in scope and duration, from long-term strategic plans for an entire community to short-term plans for a project. Audiences include municipal staff, community leaders, organizations and interest groups, leaders in the arts community and artists, and the business community.

Example program topics: city, county, or regional planning; planning for community infrastructure, including broadband; disaster preparedness and recovery; arts and culture programs; community food systems

What is Community Development

Topic: Business Development, Community Planning, Resilience, and Sustainability, Community-Based Economic Development | Phase: Initiating & Scoping, Organizing | Resource Use: , | Resource Format: Fact Sheet, Process Guide

Community development is an essential component of county Extension education. To successfully incorporate community development into their programs, county agents and their supervisors need to recognize and define what is— and what is not—encompassed in community and economic development. This document provides a brief review.

Economic Opportunity Maps

Topic: Business Development, Community Planning, Resilience, and Sustainability, Community-Based Economic Development | Phase: Initiating & Scoping, Organizing, Assessing, Visioning & Planning | Resource Use: , | Resource Format: Presentation, Program, Tool, Web-based Tool

The Economic Opportunity Mapping (EOM) Tool provides interactive online maps that allow users to visualize potential county-level economic opportunities for businesses in different industries across the United States. In addition to county summary statistics, the EOM tool provides a visual representation of results of a model producing expected industrial predicted…

A Primer in Community-based Social Marketing

Topic: Community Planning, Resilience, and Sustainability | Phase: Initiating & Scoping, Organizing, Assessing, Visioning & Planning, Implementing, Evaluating & Reflecting | Resource Use: , | Resource Format: Fact Sheet, Process Guide

This guide is written to help produce sustainable behavioral changes within communities.

Business Sustainability: Moving from Thought to Action

Topic: Business Development, Community Planning, Resilience, and Sustainability | Phase: Initiating & Scoping, Organizing, Assessing, Visioning & Planning | Resource Use: , | Resource Format: Fact Sheet

This fact sheet describes what a sustainable business is and will help businesses develop a sustainability goal, understand the behavior changes necessary to meet that goal, provide techniques to achieve those behavior changes, and outline the implementation of a successful plan.

Beginner’s Guide to Grant Writing

Topic: Community Planning, Resilience, and Sustainability, Community-Based Economic Development, Human Capacity Building, Natural Resources, Organizational Development | Phase: Initiating & Scoping, Organizing, Assessing, Visioning & Planning, Implementing, Evaluating & Reflecting | Resource Use: , | Resource Format: Presentation, Process Guide, Program

The Beginner’s Guide to Grant Writing (BGGW) workshop is an award-winning two-day in-person training in which participants draft a proposal, give and receive feedback on each other’s proposal, search for funders, and learn the importance of building relationships with partners and funders. The BGGW workshop is an efficient, economical, evidence-based…

A Convenors Guide to Hosting a Public Forum

Topic: Community Planning, Resilience, and Sustainability, Inclusive Processes and Engagement, Organizational Development | Phase: Initiating & Scoping | Resource Use: , | Resource Format: Process Guide

This publication will assist an agent with details of how to organize a host committee and design a public forum.

Community Assessment Focus Group Guide

Topic: Community Planning, Resilience, and Sustainability, Inclusive Processes and Engagement | Phase: Assessing | Resource Use: , | Resource Format: Process Guide

The Extension Community Assessment Focus Group Facilitation Guide is a tool for facilitating listening sessions with community members. Involving community members in a focus group is an effective way to engage people in discussion and the identification of community issues. This document provides guidance to Extension Agents to facilitate a…

Community First Impressions

Topic: Community Health, Community Planning, Resilience, and Sustainability | Phase: Assessing | Resource Use: , | Resource Format: Program, Tool

As the old saying goes, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” For first time visitors, the way a community presents itself is of equal importance. The look and feel of the community experienced by a visitor will most likely influence how long they stay, if…