I read another good LinkedIn post by Seth Kaplan the other day about a debate in the community development space around whether we should invest our dollars and efforts in people directly, or indirectly through place-based solutions. In it, he says, “The best community development strategies don’t choose between people and places—they recognize that thriving people need thriving places.”
If I could suggest one improvement to this statement, it would be to add that thriving places also need thriving people. It’s a positive feedback loop; when people thrive, so do the places where they live, work, and relax, and when places thrive so do the people who call them home.
In his post, Kaplan references an article published by The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in the July 2008 edition of Land Lines. The article points out the pros and cons of both people-based and place-based types of investment and shares examples of both that have been successful and also examples that have been not-so-successful.
Sidenote: Why is it that well-researched concepts circulating nearly 20 years ago are still not mainstream?
Anyhow, back to this post.
The article kind of buries the lead if you ask me, but it does eventually point out what Kaplan is advocating for. That is, real improvement for individuals happens when they receive both direct and indirect investment. And likewise, communities reach peak optimization when both the individuals living there and the community itself receive healthy investment.
This is not exactly rocket science. If you’ve done any work with even a small collection of human beings. Whether it’s your with department in the office, your congregation at church, your kid’s soccer team, your neighborhood block, or your local bowling league, you know that it’s when we put our efforts into improvements for both the individuals and the group as a whole that we see the most obvious and successful transformations.
Why, then, do we keep getting hung up in this “either-or space” when it’s abundantly clear that a “yes and” approach is infinitely more successful?
I suppose there are a multitude of reasons, including a system designed to benefit a select few at the expense of the majority, but it’s not especially hard to shift the focus of our work to one that’s more collective, incorporating both people and place support, if we really want to. Take the work of a group of non-profit and public service organization leaders in my community as an example.
These six leaders worked together for 15 months to increase their impact in our community by collaborating to solve a real, common community problem, instead of working in their own silos or even competing with each other, as had been the norm previously.
The representatives from the metropolitan housing authority, local county foundation, public health department, local chapter of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and Area Agency on Aging set an ambitious goal of “ending the cycle of poverty”.
After gathering data from the regional workforce development board, the local office of First Call 211, and the local United Way, and considering the empirical evidence and qualitative data they had gathered from the community members they serve, these leaders went on to form a hypothesis: if they could help individuals retain employment (and workplaces retain employees), more individuals would have the resources necessary to move out of poverty.
To test this hypothesis, they designed a first, small, experiment, a pilot really, designed to increase awareness of 211 and the services it provides. They believed that if they could catch workers before they left their jobs and provide the services they needed to stay employed, then more of the employees would stay in their jobs. They accomplished this in a simple, inexpensive way: by adding information about 211 to the awareness presentations NAMI is already delivering in local workplaces.
In this way, this group of leaders hoped to leverage both indirect and direct support mechanisms. That is, the NAMI awareness presentations and the services that 211 provide are both indirect, place-focused models. And the services that individuals access through 211 are largely direct, individual-focused mechanisms.
What made the transition from “either or” to “yes and” possible for this group? They tell me it was two main things:
- The supportive and consistent presence of a skilled guide or facilitator.
- Patience. Real change is slow and winding.
So, really, what is preventing us from shifting to a “yes and” approach to community impact? Sure there, are systemic barriers, but when we come together around a common goal, anything is possible. We just need to have the desire and drive to make the change. What would it take for you and others in your community to make the shift to “yes and”? And when will you get started?
