Developing Community Sustainability Indicators through Campus-Community Partnerships

Learning Outcomes Workshop participants will learn from examples presented the ways in which city and county governments are exploring partnerships with local colleges, universities, and non-profit organizations. Participants will be able to begin visualizing how they can reach out to local area governments and non-profits to explore partnerships. Participants will learn about a variety of approaches to explore appropriate indicator sets and identify what might be the best fit for their communities.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” -Peter Drucker

Starting Point in the Room Show of hands:  Who is already engaged in a community indicators project?  Is your campus playing a role in facilitating the process, gathering data, or in another way?

Check-In Of those in the room who are currently engaged in a community indicators project… How many are engaged in the STAR Community Index? Eco-District? Other? How many are working with local government? NGO? Other?

Wake Forest Tri-lateral partnership slipped Community NGO fail Indicators NGO re-org Higher ed misaligned assets What’s next County Comp Plan as launch pad Reinvigorate stakeholder collaboration after cool down Square-Peg-in-a-Round-Hole Takeaway: When the process seems unnecessarily difficult, step back and evaluate

Ecodistricts: National Movement; Atlanta Context

Performance Areas

Neighbors & citizens Businesses CIDs Utilities Developers Development authorities Institutions Local political representatives Critical Stakeholders

5 Target Cities

Outcomes Civic pride & engagement Management tool for aggregating impacts & guiding future decisions Enhanced brand for district & its businesses Improved quality of life for those who live, work, play in district

Quick project FIRST – build momentum, then governance Organizational capacity critical – MUST be someone’s day job Broader community investment critical Lessons Learned from Atlanta

Community Approach

Austin/Central Texas  Pre-STARS  Community Indicators  Moved to a campus

Central Texas Sustainability Indicators Project Began as a joint venture between a community leader, a UT Austin faculty member, and a City of Austin official Populist indicator selection process Unusual in scope then and now Eight Reports,

Case Study INTENTREALITY Partnerships with other regional efforts Focus filling gaps in data collection and measuring what community was talking about Viable stand alone non-profit Leaders will fund data collection and analysis of their priority programs and if you build the data warehouse, they will come to use the data Cult following among regional leadership, sparse formal use Success in data collection, but people don’t need data to form or hold a political opinion Now on fifth business model Housed at City Housed at Community College Stand-alone Housed at for-profit PR firm Now at UT-Austin No they won’t

What’s Next Becoming a Research Resource within UT Austin Identifying value to emerging community efforts City of Austin STAR, EcoDistrict Community Action Network Neighborhood based efforts Identify resilient structure for collaborations between university and community

Synthesis Takeaways re Community Asset Mapping How can we make our efforts more resilient? What elements of your process have worked well; what adjustments would you make with hindsight and/or moving forward?