Make Communities Happen Accelerator
Make Communities Happen Accelerator, a seven-month guided project-advancement process designed to provide individualized support to organizations advancing community-focused projects.
Communities are filled with good ideas and promising opportunities. Yet even the most worthwhile projects can lose momentum as organizations navigate competing priorities, limited capacity, changing circumstances, stakeholder dynamics, and implementation challenges.
The Accelerator was created to help organizations maintain momentum and move community-focused projects from ideas and intentions to action, implementation, and community impact.
Unlike a traditional training program, workshop series, or predetermined curriculum, the Accelerator is tailored to the unique needs, opportunities, challenges, and goals of each participating organization. The process begins with a comprehensive Project Discovery and Assessment Session and evolves through a customized pathway co-created with each organization, tailored to its specific project, priorities, and circumstances.
The Goal:
To help organizations move community-focused projects from ideas and intentions to action, implementation, and community impact.
How the Accelerator Works
The Accelerator begins with a three-hour facilitated Project Discovery and Assessment Session involving organizational leadership and key stakeholders.
This working session is designed to help organizations clarify their project, identify opportunities and barriers, surface assumptions, uncover overlooked assets, assess implementation readiness, and determine the most effective path forward.
Together, participants from the organization will explore:
- The project vision and intended community impact
- Community assets, strengths, and opportunities
- Key stakeholders, partners, and potential collaborators
- Barriers, challenges, and implementation gaps
- Community engagement and support strategies
- Resources and funding opportunities
- Priorities, next steps, and opportunities for advancement
Following the assessment, Dr. Jenni Frumer and the Community Foundation's professional leadership will work alongside the organization to co-create a customized pathway to advance the project.
Over the following six months, organizations will participate in monthly virtual sessions focused on the issues, opportunities, decisions, and implementation needs most relevant to their project.
Because every project is different, the focus of each session is tailored to the organization's progress, challenges, opportunities, and evolving needs.
Community Convenings
Over 50 passionate community leaders joined us for our Make Communities Happen convenings in Mineola, Harlan and Carson.
