Project Development

At the heart of every community initiative is a common goal that the community has identified and is working to address. This idea is the fundamental concept of how a community center should operate. In order to define your mission, it is important that community groups and their leaders have a shared vision for the goal/continued service of their own organization. The mission is also a community center's identity statement to potential members and others who will invest time and money in your center.

Identifying Community Needs & Designing Programs

Communities are vulnerable to physical, social and financial actors. To address these vulnerabilities as well as general needs of any community, it is important to design and provide meaningful programs. In our research we have uncovered all these cases where communities were experiencing one or all of these actors. When designing programs it is important to consider the following.

Intended Audience
Desired Outcome/Impact
Cost

Understanding your intended audience allows you to understand their needs and means to satisfy them. Every program should be designed with an outcome common to every individual who participates. To best visualize the success or logistics of any program it is best to create a pilot program to measure the necessary resources and adjust accordingly.

Photo of Glass Art Workshop at La Goyco Community Fair

Determining Program Logistics

When determining program logistics, it is recommended to prepare a pilot program or activity. Through completing a pilot program, organizations will have a better idea of the most important logistics to be considered. From our research, we determined the following as steps recommend when determining Program Logistics. Our findings were also informed by the Community Center Guide and Toolkit(Cubuy).

1. Identify the Necessary Resources

- This includes any equipment, transportation, or other resources that are critical to operating your program

2. Determine Staffing

- This entails understanding how many individuals it will take to ensure the successfulness of your program such that it is fully operational

3. Perform a Cost Analysis

- This aspect of determining program logistics entails completing a financial evaluation of your program of what it costs to run and sustain.

4. Conduct a Pilot Program

- Conduct a small scale version of your program to better understand its feasibility and identify challenges that you did not anticipate prior to launching your program

An example of a pilot program that is common amongst most community centers is a food drive. In this instance the pilot program logistics would consist of the following:

Pickup/Delivery of Food
Cost of Food
Amount of Food per Individual
Staffing

For the implementation of any program or service, a cost analysis is essential in understanding the practicality of such a service. In the example of a food drive a cost analysis may be performed by determining the cost per unit multiplied by the anticipated units. This resulting cost should then be compared against your available funds.