Community Development and Community Activity
It is easy to forget why supporting community activity is important, when there are big plans on the table. This post highlights some of the pitfalls.
Community Development Corporations
During the eighties, I attended a workshop about Community Development Corporations (CDCs), led by two Americans. CDCs are similar to what we call Community Development Trusts in the UK.
I remember one American observed they were talking to the wrong people. The room was full of community development workers, council officers and other professionals. In the States he said he would be addressing a completely different audience. It would be a mixture of community activists and representatives of foundations. (Foundations are trusts set up by businesses that support community and charitable objectives and receive tax incentives.)
The representatives of foundations are business people seeking deals with local people. The aim of a similar meeting in the US would be to help activists and foundations make business deals.
The professionals who attend this type of meeting in the UK would, in the States, be back in the office! The local activists attend the meetings and negotiate with the foundations.
I have rarely seen anything like this in the UK. Grants, contracts and loans fund community development, promoted by professionals who have little at stake in the communities they claim to represent.
Social Enterprises
Social entrepreneurs are perhaps the closest we come to the US approach but many social enterprises are still grant orientated.
This has major disadvantages. How many social enterprises have failed because they received up-front funding before they had built a customer base? They fail when their funding runs out before they can build their own income stream. The grant making body does not treat the grant as an investment and so has little real interest in the outcomes apart from requesting an evaluation report.
Community development must focus on developing people so they are able to raise and manage funds themselves. Failure to this:
- undermines the role of local activists
- marginalises local entrepreneurs
- denies community groups the business support they would receive with an investment
- makes social enterprises dependent upon grants, contracts and loans, all tied to the objectives of the body that awards them.
Grants, contracts and loans have a role but when they dominate the funding scene they distort how local organisations function. Development workers need to equip local activists to take on entrepreneurial roles in community.
Can you think of examples of social enterprises financed too soon or where finance has helped them grow?