The Stewards' Council component of the Sustaining Community Success process helps communities formulate a plan to move forward in a consistent and concerted effort. It is important to involve a diverse group of participants including key leaders and emerging leaders, and to ensure that all voices are heard. Two characteristics are important when forming the Steward’s Council – the Stewards must be hopeful and they must take ownership of the process. The Stewards Councils also help the community get traction on projects and work effectively and efficiently together. The Stewards discussion will result in broad-based community support for a set of key community priorities and an action plan on how to move the priorities forward.
The outcomes of this process are a defined community destiny, drivers to reach that destiny and defined priorities that will influence the alignment of Community Fund Resources in the further development of their community.
Our community has done this before.
Many communities in northwest Minnesota have done community visioning processes to only modest or no success. This is more than a visioning process. This process is different in a few fundamental ways:
- This process is about getting to real action and real progress.
- We will continue to work in your community with you to move forward on the strategies…our end result isn’t a vision or plan, its real projects on the ground.
- The HRDC leadership brings 55 years of community and economic development experience to your community.
- Your community is establishing a funding source for these projects.
Who should participate?
A broad base of community participation is always best. What does that mean? It means we need positional leaders like the Mayor, Superintendant, and leaders of key organizations in the community. But it is also important that people committed to the success of the community, whether a positional leader or not, have an opportunity to participate and express their ideas and opinions. During our discussion, positional leaders will be asked to “leave their hats at the door” and participate from the viewpoint of a community member and leader.
How does this relate to the community fund?
By helping the community identify priorities and align resources, we have laid the foundation for expanded community fund success in meeting and helping fund the priorities of the community. How? Once the community’s top priorities and opportunities are identified, a broader base of support will result. Alignment on the top priorities provides greater opportunity for leveraging community resources within each of the community funds.
