The American author Mark Twain spoke for everyone when he wrote, “I’m all for progress – it’s change I can’t stand.”
Creating positive change is hard. It takes vision, plenty of determination and even more patience. ICF offers many tools to help you fully understand your challenges, build a strong coalition to address them, create effective strategies and make sure you are executing them well.
How to Make Progress
Download a strategy report on the issues you are facing. We offer free and paid reports to help you craft an effective development strategy, illustrated with examples from communities like yours around the world.
Take an online course. The Community Accelerator is a series of online courses for the people who will lead positive change in your community, from government and business to education and community groups. It offers roadmaps to respond to the challenges you face, from economic development and broadband to education, citizen engagement, social inclusion and sustainability.
Connect with an ICF expert. An ICF professional can provide a customized presentation to members of your community, from City Council to business groups and community activists, either online or in person. The engagement can include private meetings with leaders, press interviews and other one-to-one connections that bring international validation to local efforts and provide the give-and-take that generates new ideas and builds commitment.
Add an ICF expert to Your team. ICF also provides ICF professionals to become outside members of your development team and answer questions, offer advice and relay the experience of other communities with the same issues. The typical structure involves monthly online meetings for a period of time you determine. In addition, we connect you with communities in our network who can offer a first-person perspective on what works and doesn’t.