A Construct for Building the Capacity of
Community-Based Initiatives in Racial and Ethnic
Communities: A Qualitative Cross-Case Analysis
Robert M. Goodman
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T
his article reports on a qualitative cross-case study
that compares patterns of implementation across
community-based public health initiatives resulting in a
construct for building the capacity of such initiatives in racial and
ethnic communities. By specifying which capacities provide
optimum leverage, community initiatives may increase precision
in developing intervention strategies that focus on those pivotal
capacities that are necessary for producing desired outcomes.
First, community capacity is defined and briefly contrasted with
social capital. Then the research method is described from
which the capacity construct is derived. The study reveals
several capacities of community-based initiatives that are crucial
in distinguishing highly successful initiatives from those that had
greater difficulty in realizing their goals. Leadership was the most
important capacity that distinguished highly and less successful
initiatives. Organizing capacity, or the propensity to provide
structure, operational procedures, oversight, and activity
formation were also critical in leveraging community action and
desired outcomes. The study concludes that developing high
levels of community capacity where it can produce the most
strategic advantage is a promising pathway for mitigating
antagonistic social factors.
KEY WORDS: community capacity, community health,
community organizing
● Study Rationale and Background
Community participation in public health promotion
activities is a fundamental precept in public health, and
the ability to mount successful community initiatives
J Public Health Management Practice, 2009, 15(2), E1–E8
Copyright C 2009 Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
is predicated largely on a local organization’s capac-
ities to be strategic in taking action.1–8 Desired com-
munity outcomes may go unrealized without a precise
recognition of which capacities are of the greatest strate-
gic importance.9,10 This article reports on a qualitative
study that explores what aspects of capacity are most
relevant to grassroots public health initiatives spear-
headed by local organizations in minority communi-
ties. The study was conducted because attempts at bet-
ter understanding capacity are pertinent to producing
more effective community betterment efforts.
● Capacity Defined
Several definitions of community capacity have been
proffered in recent years. A report from the Institute of
Medicine considers community capacity to be a social
protective factor, or a “. . .condition that can mitigate so-
cial ills.”11(p84) The report suggests that social protective
factors may be health protective in the face of social
inequalities like poverty, racial disparities, limited em-
ployment options, and other social determinants of health
that contribute to public health risk. As with the In-
stitute of Medicine report, The Aspen Institute,12 The
Colorado Trust,13 and other researchers in community-
based public health10 reflect similar dimensions that
highlight the direct relationship between the capacity
of community initiatives and the population health.
This work was supported by a grant CCU615784 from the Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention, in conjunction with the Tulane University Prevention Research
Center Special Interest Project 23 PR-99 Development of Practical Measures of
Protective Social Factors and Social Capital in Racial and Ethnic Communities.
Corresponding Author: Robert M. Goodman, PhD, School of Health, Physical
Education, and Recreation, 1025 E Seventh St, HPER 111, Bloomington, IN 47405
(rmg@indiana.edu).
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Robert M. Goodman, PhD, is Dean, School of Health, Physical Education, and
Recreation, Bloomington, Indiana.
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E2 ❘ Journal of Public Health Management and Practice
Both Goodman et al4 and Chaskin14 subsume social
capital within community capacity, inferring that the
latter is a more encompassing construct. Goodman et al4
define community capacity as “the characteristics of com-
munities that affect their ability to identify, mobilize,
and address social and public health problems,”(p259)
and they delineate 10 dimensions of capacity: leader-
ship, citizen participation, skills, networks, resources,
sense of community, community power, understand-
ing community history, values, and critical reflection.
The dimensions underscore relationships across multi-
ple social levels and can be applied to both geographic
communities and communities of shared identity. By
way of comparison, Putnam15 characterizes social cap-
ital as composed of four dimensions: (1) trust, (2) civic
involvement, (3) social engagement, and (4) reciprocity
or exchange that informs an initial attempt at mea-
surement of community health initiatives. The works
of Putnam and Goodman et al overlap. Citizen partic-
ipation for Goodman et al is equivalent to Putnam’s
civic involvement, and reciprocity for Putnam is sim-
ilar to networks for Goodman et al. But the construct
for community capacity seems to contain as many as
six additional dimensions that are not included in the
construct for social capital. Similarly, Chaskin et al add
that capacity derives from “the interaction of human
capital, organizational resources, and social capital ex-
isting within a given community that can be leveraged
to solve collective problems and improve or maintain
the well-being of a given community.”14(p395)
Although there is little question that concepts like
community capacity and social capital require clarifica-
tion especially in how one may be distinguished from
the other, clarifying such distinctions is not the main
purpose of this article. It is to provide a conceptual lens
that complements social capital and that offers a con-
struct for the capacities that are necessary for commu-
nity public health initiatives to optimize the likelihood
that they achieve desired outcomes.
● Study Methods and Design
This study used qualitative approaches to establish
a construct for the capacities necessary in opera-
tionalizing successful community-based public health
initiatives.16,17 The premise of the research holds that
those initiatives with the highest evidence of organi-
zational capacity have the greatest likelihood of realiz-
ing their goals. Eight community-based initiatives in a
large southern city agreed to participate in the study.
To recruit the eight, an array of recognized community
leaders suggested possible initiatives to study. From a
list of 30 initiatives generated, eight were selected by a
university research team in conjunction with a commu-
nity advisory board that was constituted for the study.
Of the eight initiatives selected, four were successful in
achieving their goals and four were challenged in do-
ing so. Successful initiatives were defined as those that
reached at least 80 percent of their established goals
and unsuccessful initiatives were those defined as those
that reached less than 20 percent of their established
goals. The selected initiatives focused on working to im-
prove the physical and social environments in specific
geographic communities; confronting industrial and
other forms of pollution and waste; working on specific
health-related topics such as HIV/AIDS, quality hous-
ing, and violence; and concentrating on overall commu-
nity development. These organizations—a combina-
tion of faith-based, well-established community-based
organizations, and grassroots voluntary groups—were
included because they represented a wide range of ex-
periences in terms of accomplishing goals and facing
challenges, they were recommended for interviewing
by community leaders, and they had established pro-
ductive working relationships with the research team.
Group interviews were conducted with core mem-
bers of each community initiative. Each initiative was
interviewed individually; thus, no interviews mixed
members from different initiatives. An open-ended in-
terview protocol was developed that focused on the
successes and challenges faced by each community ini-
tiative in trying to achieve its goals. All group inter-
views lasted about 2 hours, were tape-recorded, and
then transcribed to have an accurate record for data
analysis. Informed consent was obtained from each in-
terview participant before initiating the interview.
The transcribed interviews were formatted into
ATLAS-ti, a software application designed for qualita-
tive analysis.18 The interviews were coded to parallel
the interview questions (eg, is a capacity factor that con-
tributed to desired project outcomes; is a capacity factor
that was absent when desired project outcomes did not
result). First, a content analysis was performed on each
interview by coding the text whenever one of the blanks
could be filled with examples from the interview text.
Following Spradley,19 similar codes were aggregated
into taxonomies. This process of coding and aggregat-
ing was repeated for each case interview so that the
resulting taxonomies were unique to each case.19 The
results were presented to seven of the eight groups for
a verification of accuracy (the eighth group was not ac-
tively functioning when approached for verification).
All seven groups verified that the results were accurate
renditions of the group interviews.
Once community validation was ensured, a cross-
site analysis was performed to ascertain how constructs
for capacity were patterned across the eight cases. The
procedures for a multiple case analysis were taken from
Miles and Huberman,20 who organized matrix arrays of
 A Construct for Building the Capacity of Community-Based Initiatives
case data. Each case was represented by a column in the
matrix, with the rows containing those elements of the
capacity taxonomy for comparison across cases.9,20,21
The cross-site analysis also contrasted sites accord-
ing to the degree of challenge that they reported facing
in their efforts. Capacities that were most often empha-
sized as contributing to success by the sites reporting
major success, but not emphasized, not mentioned, or
mentioned as lacking by sites when describing their dis-
appointments and challenges served to confirm the im-
portance of a dimension for the emergent construct for
capacity. Similarly, when sites emphasized factors that
contributed to challenges or led to disappointments but
were not mentioned in connection to goals that they
achieved, this pattern confirmed a dimension as impor-
tant to the emergent construct for capacity. For example,
when organizations mentioned the importance to suc-
cess of having processes and procedures in place that
would allow members to have disagreements without
negatively impacting relationships and they or other or-
ganizations mentioned arguing and personal conflicts
as detracting from success, the researchers determined
that processes and procedures for preventing or effec-
tively engaging in conflict were an important aspect of
community capacity.
● Study Findings
Construct for capacity
Figure 1 depicts three of the dominant dimensions of
capacity—leadership, organizing, and activism. This
section describes each of the dimensions and suggests
how capacity contributes to the outcomes desired by
the community. It further elaborates on how outside
forces (ie, social, economic, and political) can debili-
tate a community initiative regardless of its level of
capacity. Citations from respondent interviews are in-
cluded selectively as evidence in support of the Figure 1
construct.
Leadership capacity
All of the eight initiatives were formed by or with local
leaders. In all cases, the leaders responded to perceived
community needs and organized to address them. For
instance, AIDS activists formed a highly effective initia-
tive when they perceived a gap in services. Also, local
leaders organized an initiative to fight environmental
pollution from a local industry, but, in this case, the
initiative experienced difficulty in achieving its aims.
Thus, the mere involvement of leadership did not seem
to be enough to guarantee success. On the other hand,
specific characteristics of leadership distinguished the
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FIGURE 1 ● Dimensions of and External Forces on Capac-
ity for Community-Based Initiatives
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initiatives that were successful in reaching their goals
versus those that were not. Leadership disposition was
foremost as a distinguishing factor. The dispositions
most often connected with goal attainment were char-
acterized as visionary, selfless, persuasive, fearless, and
respected as opposed to overloaded, overwhelmed, un-
responsive, self-interested, and passive that dominated
the four more challenged initiatives. The following
quotations characterize the difference between groups
with effective and ineffective leadership, with the first
emphasizing the importance of coupling commitment
with vision:
It took a while for me to really decide that I wanted to
give up what I had in the private sector to take on this
challenge—and it was a challenge. I knew, since I was
the (organization’s) founder, the steps needed. I saw the
vision. I put a plan together.
An example from another successful case of positive
dispositional attributes included leaders who refused
to bow to mob pressure aimed at persuading the initia-
tive to drop their reform candidate for state legislature
out of the race. In yet another successful case, the lead-
ership was described as “not easily intimidated by the
pressures and the hard knocks that come,” when con-
fronting contractors, loan authorities, and land owners
in developing high-quality, low-income housing.
These characterizations of leadership as active, vi-
sionary, and fearless stand in contrast to depictions of
leadership most associated with the more challenged
initiatives. For instance, respondents from one initiative
attributed their difficulty in getting a response from lo-
cal government as a consequence of a local leadership
that was passive:
Other people are coming into this community and they
get permits and things, and then we have our
leadership who will sit back. They tell us in City Hall,
E4 ❘ Journal of Public Health Management and Practice
“we don’t know who is in the leadership.” . . . They say,
“this isn’t a leadership,” and they don’t want to deal
with any particular group, because if they did, say with
[our] group, then this [other] group is going to get mad.
They always say, “go back to the board and get
yourselves together.”
Other characteristics of leadership in instances of
limited success included corruption or favoritism in al-
locating governmental funds and jobs, and burnout as
illustrated in the following quote:
[the leader] had a beautiful vision, but its foundation
wasn’t as strong as his vision was, because he didn’t
know how to delegate—he wanted to put all this on his
shoulder. So when [the leader] shut down, everything
shut down.
Leadership decision-making style that was character-
ized as participatory and team-oriented also seemed to
be more associated with goal achievement, as in the fol-
lowing description by one respondent about the lead-
ership team in his organization:
I’m not afraid to take the lead. I’m a brave leader, but
I’m a better follower. Cal’s not afraid to take the lead.
He’s a great follower as well. Sam’s not afraid to take the
lead. He’s a great follower as well. We’ll do any of the
jobs. It doesn’t matter what the task is, you see. There’s
no jealousy. It doesn’t matter, you know, because we
hash it out. Now, if I do something they don’t like,
they’ll tell me about it, or if it’s too far, they’ll check you
right in front of whoever else is there. That’s the way
we are, and each and every one of us is different.
In contrast, when decision making was characterized
as top-down or passive, it seemed to lead more often to
disappointments and challenges for the initiatives.
We had the sandblasting [of a local government
building] totally demolish [residents’] houses. There
was the money allocated for a chosen few leaders [to fix
the problem]. They chose where they wanted this
money to go to, and the rest of the people have to go
out and get loans on a fixed income to bring these
houses half-way up to standard. Through the years the
government has been allocating money here, and this
money never reached the poor, because I’m sitting to
this table. I’m one of the poor. I can tell true facts that we
have never received any money that was ever allocated
here to us. . .. We have to try to find somebody that
could provide the type of leadership that we’re looking
for. Then we have a problem with trying to get people.
Leadership Ethos epitomized a dimension of capac-
ity that was present in all eight cases. All were guided
by a distinct set of leadership principles (ethos) that res-
onated with community members, thus fostering a base
of community support for the initiative. Religious or
spiritual expressions were one manifestation of ethos.
Others included the leaders invoking principles such
as the sanctity of community heritage and identity, the
importance of neighborhood stability, and the family
orientation. Leadership values predicated on human
dignity are typified in the quote below and can be gen-
eralized to all eight cases. The quote is from a discussion
regarding the influence of leadership on community
awareness. It suggests that the principles held by those
in leadership positions connect to the innate sense of
social rights and equity that reside within community
members:
We could not be successful at anything we do, nor could
any other nonprofit organization if you didn’t have
individuals in the community who were aware of the
fact that they should have more rights than they have,
or that they should receive more respect than they have,
or that there is a better standard of living that they don’t
have access too. We don’t just go out and make people
know these things. Our job is to go out and find people
who are already aware of the fact that there is a better
side to this. And then we help them access it.
Collectively, the cases illustrate that when the ethos
that underlies a community-based initiative is well ar-
ticulated and resonates with community members, they
become predisposed to participation in support of the
initiatives’ ideals. However, still more is needed to
guide such a committed membership to successful out-
comes. An initiative’s capacity for organizing an op-
erational base is pivotal in providing a framework for
meaningful participation and helps explain why initia-
tives with similarly articulated principles can experi-
ence dramatically different outcomes.
Organizing
In the four successful cases, the leadership’s ability
to develop functional structures and processes, includ-
ing initiative infrastructure, planning and oversight
mechanisms, were most often associated with goal
achievement. Success also seemed to be associated with
initiative members’ ability to cooperate, solve prob-
lems, resolve conflicts, and reflect critically on the im-
pact of their efforts.
These distinguishing characteristics suggest that, in
order for the leadership to translate its principles into
effective action, leaders must be painstaking about the
following qualities:
• How they organize: “We have shown that [we] know
how to mobilize the community, to get a community
meeting successful and to handle a large funding
base in terms of no audit exceptions.”
• How they plan: “We meet and we collaborate on
projects. We discuss in a group setting as a team
effort. . .. Everyone has input in the decision making,
everyone has a say, and then ultimately all of that is
put in, and then I will decide. It is a team approach
that has ensured that we get the best from our poten-
tial. It’s not a shotgun approach. . . . We look at our
overall mission, we look at programs that we would
 A Construct for Building the Capacity of Community-Based Initiatives
like to see implemented and how funding will effect
what needs to be done.”
• How to problem solve and resolve conflict: “We ran into
a lot of brick walls. I had an 86-year-old [funder] who
was stubborn and controlling his whole life. . . . I kept
taking him back to reality by looking at the contract
and what we had negotiated. That was the key. We
not only structured our [funding] agreement, but
also our agreement on how we were going to op-
erate, and we agreed upon that in the very begin-
ning before any ink dried on the [contract with the
funder].”
By way of contrast, initiatives that were not success-
ful perceived that intragroup and/or interpersonal con-
flict, coupled with no pathway for its constructive reso-
lution, or what one respondent epitomized as “the spirit
of confusion”:
Every meeting I go to . . . you going to have as many
different reasons and opinions about that issue. I like to
believe that the table is round and that means that
everybody has something to input, and after that
happens we take a priority check. After a priority check,
[we] just take a vote; but, everybody don’t want to listen
to [those chairing the meeting], so [participants] go on
and bicker. I know that a spirit of confusion is determined
to be in our meetings. . . . Some of us love to be a part of
the problem. So other people get discouraged when
those kinds of people are around and they say “well,
I’m not going to be bothered, leave me alone.”
Community action (activism)
Virtually all respondents from the eight initiatives char-
acterized a sense of community as a motivating fac-
tor for their involvement. Thus, sense of community
is not a distinguishing characteristic for effectiveness.
Rather, a strong organizational base seemed to be the
distinguishing dimension in motivating involvement
and effective action. That is, the degree to which an
initiative’s activities were organized and coordinated
corresponded most with the level of community partic-
ipation. Respondents from the initiatives that achieved
their intended outcomes were more readily able to de-
tail a set of well-organized and coordinated activities
in which community members could participate. They
reported less difficulty in mobilizing the community.
In the following quote, members of one initiative com-
pare themselves to what they have heard about another
community that was still struggling to achieve major
goals:
Respondent 1: What happened in this community, if you
had rent problem, you never gave up supper.
Respondent 2: And the other thing, though, the [other
community] didn’t have the cultural togetherness. . . .
(1) they don’t have the skill to organize, (2) they don’t
❘ E5
understand racism—they don’t understand that factor,
and (3) people mistrust them, because they been out
there so long and they ain’t did nothing all these years.
In the above quote, the importance of both a sense
of community and effective organizational processes
is emphasized. One respondent supports this notion
with an explanation of what leads to passivity in his
community:
You see sometimes we are so passive, [and] when you
are passive you get nothing done. . . . The radical people
back here, why they get attention? Because they go
down there, and harass, and fire up. But we say, “We
going to wait for God.” God said, “Get up and go!” We
going to have to do something to make them look at our
neighborhood.
Again, the importance of organized activities with
roles for a large number of community members is con-
trasted with a tendency to “wait for God” in explaining
why some communities get attention and get people
motivated and others do not.
● Outcomes Produced by the Effective and
Challenged Initiatives
The outcomes produced by the four effective cases were
in line with initiative goals. To a lesser extent, goal at-
tainment occurred in two of the cases with more chal-
lenges, with three cases depicting their efforts as lead-
ing to disappointment and dispiritedness. Examples of
desired outcomes from the four effective cases include
the development of affordable housing with full occu-
pancy, improved and expanded health and social ser-
vices, reduced community violence, defeat of an un-
desirable rezoning plan and unsupportive politicians,
and increased legitimacy and influence with elected of-
ficials. In contrast, the more challenged cases did not
recognize as many successes and were often dispirited
and bitter. The following interaction at a group inter-
view is emblematic of responses across the four chal-
lenged initiatives:
Question: Can we talk for a minute about any successes
you had?
Respondent 1: I’m trying to think real hard.
Respondent 2: We haven’t had any successes.
Respondent 3: I’m trying to think of successes. That’s
right none.
Respondent 4: We haven’t had any successes.
Respondent 5: None. Absolutely.
The following quotation characterizes the sense of pow-
erlessness that were felt by all four challenged groups:
. . . . I have worked in other communities, . . . and their
stories are quite different. . . .than [our] stories. These
people had the same problems, but they have so much
E6 ❘ Journal of Public Health Management and Practice
more hope. [In our community] hope is smothered.
They don’t have hope back here. That is what smothers
this community, they know they been abandoned and
nobody cares about them.
● The Effect of External Forces on
Community Capacity
Although differences among initiatives in leadership,
organizing, and activism capacities help to explain dif-
ferences in goal achievement; also important is the na-
ture of the forces external—economic, political, and
social—to the community. As for outside political
forces, some initiatives may simply confront a lack of
interest on the part of governmental officials. For in-
stance, when one group was asked, “Why do you sus-
pect that you are not seeing quicker action compared to
other places?” the answer—“We not top priority [by
government agencies]”—was typical of demoralized
initiative members. Adverse outside economic factors
were typical where members perceived power hold-
ers as purposefully blocking community action for per-
sonal gain as the following quotation typifies: “Some
of the politicians have contracts, like the dumpsters.
You know, they make money and so to get rid of (re-
locate) this community [living on a toxic waste dump]
they would lose money.” Racism perceived by initia-
tive members stands as an example of a negative social
force. For instance, in one community where the initia-
tive disbanded members felt that they were victims of
racism:
Something I noticed and I see it in this community is
just like everywhere and that’s the racial issues, and we
haven’t talked anything about racism at all and it ain’t
because I’m Black, but it’s something we have to put on
the table. One of the things that people don’t
acknowledge is the insidious racism that happens in
this community. As I painted a picture of the different
neighborhoods, this is a Black neighborhood . . . and the
neighborhood that’s gets everything last as far as
representation. We get everything last.
To overcome what might be characterized as either
passive or active opposition, communities need to un-
derstand the nature of the opposition and then develop
strategies to overcome it. In the case of not being a pri-
ority, for example, communities may need to use their
capacities to draw attention to themselves and their sit-
uation, to garner powerful support. In the case of ex-
plicit opposition, the solution—at least in the experi-
ences of these eight organizations—becomes much less
clear. To illustrate, in the challenged case where the
community’s residents lived on a toxic waste dump,
the critical dimensions of capacity were present (com-
mitted leadership, organization, and activism). How
then can the lack of initiative success for this case be
explained in a manner consistent with the analysis so
far? The explanation lay in the array of negative and
powerful outside forces that forestalled effectiveness.
The impact of outside power is summed up in the fol-
lowing quote from a community member: “. . .the peo-
ple with the deep pockets are the ones who are strong
against us.” In this case, community members were
pitted against the federal government and a power-
ful oil industry, and even though initiative members
recounted intensive levels of activism and persistence
in their struggle of more than 20 years to remove the
homes and relocate the families, they were met with
stiff opposition seemingly beyond their ken. Many of
the members of the initiatives involved in this initiative
also cited racism—individual and institutional—as one
if not the root cause of such external opposition. In al-
most all of the group interviews, racism surfaced as
an important social factor that impeded initiative out-
comes: Question—“Why didn’t they move this com-
munity?” Answer—“I’m Black. That’s why. [Spelling]
B-L-A-C-K, and they don’t care what happens to me or
my grandchildren.”
● Discussion and Conclusion
This article reports on the development of a construct
for capacity of community-based public health initia-
tives. The construct is empirically grounded in the ex-
periences of eight cases. The study focuses on dimen-
sions of capacity that are of greatest strategic import
to a community initiative in realizing its goals. More-
over, if an initiative is strategic in maximizing capacity,
it can then become socially protective in the face of ad-
verse external conditions, that is, social determinants of
health. That the study was conducted in communities
that were poor and largely African American under-
scores the fact that the health disparities that many mi-
nority communities experience are inextricably linked
to social determinants.
The present study provides empirical grounding for
many of the 10 capacity dimensions articulated by the
aforementioned Centers for Disease Control and Pre-
vention symposium.4 In particular, capable leadership
was sine qua non. The essential characteristics of high-
capacity leadership are transformative in nature and
are personified as visionary, risk-taking, inclusive, par-
ticipatory, transparent, value-based, and reflective in
problem solving.22 In a recently published quantitative
study of community capacity, Lempa and colleagues23
found that leadership capacity contributed to more than
five times of the variance than all other factors and more
to the total variance than all other factors combined. Or-
ganizing and activism were also key variables. Lasker
and Weiss24 draw similar conclusions in their study of
 A Construct for Building the Capacity of Community-Based Initiatives
community initiatives funded by the Kellogg Founda-
tion. That is, strategic activities tend to occur where the
community initiative attends to organizational details.
On a pessimistic note, the study’s finding that well-
organized activities can be stymied when arrayed
against powerful outside interests is not new.25 Al-
though all of the initiatives in this study struggled to
be heard by outside power holders, those initiatives
that were able to persuade powerful outsiders of the
importance of the initiatives’ work seemed to reach
more of their goals. From the data presented herein,
it seems enormously difficult for initiatives to achieve
their goals when the outside power holders are solidly
opposed to those goals. In this regard, social capital is
an essential ingredient for community capacity.
In conclusion, the study should be viewed in light
of its weaknesses. First, the Figure 1 construct is based
only on eight initiatives in one southern city. How well
it generalizes to other places is an open question, and
one that will require additional investigation. Second,
the case studies depended largely on group interviews.
Although, they produced more than 1 000 pages of tran-
scripts, such a mono-method approach has built-in lim-
itations for developing construct richness. Third, the
construct developed herein has limited generalizabil-
ity beyond organized community efforts that are issue
focused.
In sum, the most salient insight taken from this study
concerns the pivotal role of high-capacity local leader-
ship in the achievement of a community-based public
health initiative’s goals. Such leadership does not nec-
essarily have to be structured into local social organiza-
tions but can be cultivated from grassroots citizenry. As
noted above, highly capable local leadership is charac-
terized by the ability to be committed to local concerns,
to rally community members around them, to organize
tasks that the members can engage with vigor, and to
link the actions in such a way that they sway influen-
tial politicians or other power brokers to act in accor-
dance with the initiative’s goals. Future studies may
further this conclusion by randomizing community ini-
tiatives in which the treatment group is provided with
intensive training in community leadership to increase
the aforementioned leadership characteristics. Because
leadership seems to be a most pivotal leverage point
in influencing desired community outcomes, such an
intervention, were it to prove significant, could be cost-
effective and parsimonious to implement.
A second related insight concerns the limits of influ-
ence that even to most capable community initiatives
face. Practically speaking, many at-risk communities
have to fend for themselves in the face of outside pres-
sure and in many instances such pressure is of suffi-
cient force that even those influentials that may rally in
support of a community may not have sufficient clout
❘ E7
to make a difference. Nevertheless, in many instances
community capacity can influence the production of
desired community outcomes, and if we believe in the
principles of social equality, job access, and economic
and personal security as highly desirable, then devel-
oping high levels of community capacity where it can
produce the most strategic advantage can be a promis-
ing pathway for mitigating many if not the most perni-
cious antagonistic social factors.
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