Center for Civic Partnerships

Community Compass

The Center offers the Community Compass as a flexible service for community visioning, assessment and action planning. Advance planning and consultation with staff tailors this process to each community’s unique needs and circumstances. Professionally facilitated and graphically recorded meetings of stakeholders review various aspects of the community’s quality of life, rate its programs and policies, deliberate on community priorities and strategies, and develop a realistic action plan. The facilitators are highly skilled and experienced in managing small and large group meetings, encouraging participation, and building consensus. The graphic recorders capture the group’s ideas and expressions through wall-sized charts and murals. A final report includes all results and graphic displays in a comprehensive, yet easy-to-read, format.

Charting a Course to the Future

Where is your community today?

Where does your community want to be tomorrow?

How are you going to get there?

These three fundamental questions are at the heart of every decision you and other leaders in your community make every day. And without reliable information—representing the opinions and values of every sector of your community—the decisions you make may be misguided or just plain wrong.

The right vehicle for engaging a wide spectrum of stakeholders in an effective dialogue on the present and future of your community has remained elusive until now. The Community Compass is a tool that you can use to tap the vision, commitment and resources of every segment of your community quickly, positively and cost-effectively. Equally important, the Community Compass program is a flexible service which can be customized to match your community’s needs and planning processes.

The result? Residents who once again feel their voices are being heard. Business leaders who see how their contributions help communities prosper. Elected officials who hear conclusively what is important to their constituents. Community service providers who visualize how their work meshes with that of other groups. Local government staff who are better able to act across traditional departmental barriers. In short, an informed, enthusiastic group of partners with a practical and agreed upon action plan that will get your community to where it wants to be.

State-Of-The-Art Tools and Techniques

The Community Compass is a three-part visioning, assessment and action process. Although the Compass is tailored to each community’s unique needs and circumstances, the following key elements are central to the service:

Advance planning and consultation with representatives of the Center for Civic Partnerships to customize the entire process, including the identification of stakeholder groups; program design; and trouble-shooting.
Professionally facilitated and graphically recorded meetings of participants who review and rate various aspects of the community’s quality of life; assess its programs and policies; deliberate on community priorities and strategies; and develop a realistic action plan.
Delivery of a final report including all assessment results and graphic displays.

One of the most compelling features of the Community Compass is the quality of the professional facilitators and specially trained graphic recorders. The facilitators are all highly skilled and experienced in managing large and small group meetings, encouraging participation and building consensus. The graphic recorders capture the group’s ideas and expressions through words, symbols and images on wall-sized charts and murals. These graphics engage the participants’ imagination and enliven the group facilitation process.

Equally compelling is the carefully crafted foundation on which the Community Compass process was built. First, an extensive research effort involving local officials, program directors and subject matter experts from a variety of fields was undertaken to identify the policies and programs most likely to result in a safer and healthier community. These community-building strategies were then reviewed and refined through extensive interviews, focus groups and pilot testing. These development efforts were led by the director and staff of California Healthy Cities and Communities, a statewide program with years of experience working with communities of all sizes and civic personalities.

Your Community: Today and Tomorrow

The first steps in the Community Compass process are to define a vision of what your community wants for its future, to assess where you are today and to evaluate potential strategies for improving your community’s quality of life. The initial stakeholder meeting includes these steps.

A Vision of Tomorrow

Using guided imagery specific to your community’s geography and history, the stakeholder group describes its vision for the future of your community. The Community Compass facilitator will take you on a visit through your community twenty or so years from now, looking at the physical layout of your area, residents at work and play, commuting patterns and so on. The composite picture is captured by a graphic illustrator on a wall-sized mural, which can also be displayed throughout the community and reproduced in a smaller format for wider distribution.

Planning for Action

The initial stakeholder meeting identifies potential strategies that are suitable for high priority action. Following the first meeting, all responses are tabulated and reports are generated for large group discussion and consensus at a follow-up session. The results are strictly for use by your community. The Community Compass staff does not share results with other communities without your consent. Strategies that may emerge as important to the community’s overall quality of life include…

Locating local lenders to finance residential and commercial investments in low-income neighborhoods.
Limiting the proliferation and concentration of alcohol outlets through conditional use permits.
Establishing an early warning system to identify companies at risk of relocating-away from the community.
Integrating a community policing philosophy throughout all city departments.
Opening school and community facilities to teenagers during evenings and weekends.
Making information about government and community services readily available to residents in multiple languages.

At the follow-up session(s), stakeholders will consider the highest priority strategies identified, reach consensus and discuss the inter-relationships among issues. The facilitator will use these findings and other tools to help participants explore issues such as these:

What trends and themes are illuminated in the report?

Are there areas or ideas that deserve further investigation or more analysis?

What positive findings should be celebrated by the community?

What are the short-and long-term actions necessary to address the identified priority areas?

Are there opportunities for collaboration between the public sector and other community resources in developing an action plan?

Following the final stakeholder meeting, you will receive a final report. Graphics of the community vision created and a list of action strategies accompany the report. These may be reproduced and distributed throughout your community as a way to widely disseminate the results of the Community Compass process.

Community Compass Q & A

How will the Community Compass Benefit My Community?

The Community Compass is a highly efficient process that can give you these benefits:

Captures the shared vision of a diverse array of community members through the use of expert facilitation and the latest technologies in graphic recording, using specially trained graphic recorders.

Highlights a community’s assets by providing an efficient way to assess the presence and quality of community-building strategies which are already in place.

Provides direction for informed decision-making, resource allocation and development in 11 areas of community life by scanning the overall community, identifying strategies which participants prioritize as important to implement or strengthen, and identifying areas for collective action.

Leads to consensus-building by providing a forum for those with varying viewpoints to think broadly and to consider the many impacts of their decisions, while considering a wide range of potential future directions and collaborations.

Monitors a community’s progress, if repeated over several years, to allow for documenting action and celebrating achievements.

How Long Does It Take?

The Community Compass can be conducted with a few stakeholder meetings of a few hours each within a period of 60 days, but can be modified to accommodate your community’s needs. Closely spaced and well-executed meetings are scheduled to make maximum use of the interest and energy levels of participants.

How Does The Community Compass Differ from Other Community Input Processes?

Other community assessment programs often require the expensive and time-consuming collection of local data. The Community Compass focuses on the programs and policies which contribute to a high quality of life. (Quantitative information may be used to enrich the findings, if desired.) Because the Community Compass is designed as an interactive process among stakeholders with knowledge and expertise in specific content areas, your community can obtain reliable results with a minimum time investment. And because the group facilitators are highly trained professionals and the focus is on current strengths as well as areas for enhancement, the Community Compass represents a positive, upbeat strategy for re-engaging residents in a search for solutions to current and potential challenges.

Sponsors and Contributing Organizations

Center for Civic Partnerships

California Healthy Cities and Communities, which initiated the first healthy cities program in the United States, sponsors and administers the Community Compass program. With a vision of every California resident living a healthy, productive life in a clean, safe environment, the program works with local leaders, such as public administrators, elected officials, health and human services professionals, and others, to accomplish its goals. The program provides technical support, sponsors educational programs and develops resource materials. The program is part of the Public Health Institute-an independent, nonprofit organization that provides research, training, technical assistance and community services in public health.

The Public Health Institute

The Public Health Institute PHI is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting health, well-being and quality of life for people throughout California, across the nation and around the world. The Center draws on the Institute's experience in community-based health improvement, leadership, policy development and public health research.