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Tools and Resources

Customized Resources and Published Materials

As programs develop, many organizations need customized training manuals, curricula or other written materials tailored to support specific initiatives. We have developed these customized materials for many organizations who are using them in communities across the country.

The Boston Foundation – Boston Community Building Curriculum- Principle V “Ensuring Access to Fundamental Opportunities” This comprehensive training module covers – creating a vision, community organizing, creating a coalition, developing a and tactical plan. Part of a seven-part curriculum.

American Cancer Society – Community Development Manual – Curriculum for ACS outreach staff across the country based on training workshops delivered by Tom Wolff and Gillian Kaye.

Publications

The efforts of your coalition or system may also benefit from one of our popular publications.

From the Ground Up: A Workbook on Coalition Building and Community Development

NOW IN ITS 4TH PRINTING!
Coalition building and community development are two powerful interventions to create healthy communities. This helpful workbook is a complete toolbox for effectively building these complex, community-wide processes. It shares field ideas, frameworks and exercises that have evolved from the authors' work in communities across the country.

Renowned authors in the field of community development wrote the chapters for this book, including: David Chavis, Stephen Fawcett, Vince Francisco, David Foster, Gillian Kaye, Beth Rosenthal, and Tom Wolff.

"Looking for a 'toolbox' for building coalitions and developing healthy communities? I've finally found a workbook that brings it all together. From the Ground Up! speaks to the everyday work of coalition coordinators and community organizers Organizers!" Chapter titles include:

  • Barriers to Coalition Building and Strategies to Overcome Them
  • Involving and Mobilizing the Grassroots
  • Dealing with Conflict in Coalitions
  • Community Assessment: A Key Tool for Mobilization and Involvement
  • Monitoring and Evaluation of Coalition Activities and Successes 200-pages, paperback

Includes hands-on worksheets

Order Form:
For all orders of From the Ground Up you can order directly from Tom Wolff & Associates using this order form (pdf).

 

The Spirit of the Coalition

“A lively and highly accessible book filled with real world illustrations and a wealth of practical tools” —Meredith Minkler Dr.P.H., University of California, Berkeley (259 pages, paperback)
Order from The American Public Health Association
https://secure.apha.org/source/orders/
or Click here to order

Tools

Coalition Empowerment Self-Assessment Tool

This tool, which was originally published in From the Ground Up: A Workbook on Coalition Building and Community Development (Wolff and Kaye, 1995 http://www.tomwolff.com/coalition-empowerment-self-assessment-tool.htm, helps a coalition examine empowerment as an aspect of all its work: goals and objectives, membership, communication, decision-making, leadership and leadership development, use of resources, coalition activities, and coalition outcomes.

Levels of Assessment Tool

A comprehensive Levels of Assessment Tool has been developed that describes the range of questions we can choose from when we document our coalitions’ work.  We use this list to help clients decide what they want to learn about through documentation and evaluation. In a collaborative participatory evaluation process, the members of the coalition and the community can review these questions to decide what is most important for them to know. This helps ensure that the evaluation is aimed at the key needs of the coalition’s members.

Coalition Member Assessment Tool

The Coalition Member Assessment tool is a variation of earlier satisfaction surveys that allow members to rate their coalition on a 1-5 scale, from agree to strongly disagree. The instrument has 44 rated questions and a few open-ended questions.

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New From Tom Wolff & Associates

This June, Tom Wolff addressed the Champions for Progress gathering in Snowbird, Utah.Click below to catch the full talk.
http://www.championsforprogress.org/resources/multiStateMeetings/
tom_wolff_presentation_june.ram

From the Ground Up: Building Hope Through Collaborative Solutions

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Free Resources

Adobe link imageMany of our free resources are provided in Adobe's PDF format. If you don't already have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you may download it at no cost from Adobe Systems.

The following Coalition Building Tip Sheets are two page summaries of key points on many critical issues in seeking collaborative solution. They were originally published as inserts in the Community Catalyst, the newsletter of Community Partners. They have been used and reproduced widely over the past ten years.

Coalition Building Tip Sheets (pdf)

The three articles that follow are recent publications by Tom Wolff that review the field of practice and research in community coalition building, healthy communities and collaborative evaluation.

Recent Articles by Tom Wolff

  • Community Coalition Building – Contemporary Practice and Research (pdf)
    Published in the American Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 29, no.2, 2001
    Introduction p. 165-172 A Practitioner’s Guide to Successful Coalitions 173-191
    These articles identify nine key dimensions related to coalition success and delineate best practices.
  • A Practical Approach to Evaluating Coalitions (pdf)
    Chapter in Evaluating Community Collaborations Edited by Thomas Backer, Springer Publishing, New York 2003
    To purchase contact Springer Publishing
    This chapter answers your key concerns in designing an evaluation of your collaborative and provides nine useful tools for both process and outcome evaluation of coalitions.
  • The Healthy Communities: Movement a Time for Transformation (pdf)
    National Civic Review, Vol. 92, Number 2, Summer, 2003, p.95-112
    This recent article looks at some of the challenges that the healthy communities movement faces and draws on the experience of Healthy Communities Massachusetts to suggest ways that practitioners can reenergize their efforts.
  • Collaborative Solutions: Building Community in New Orleans and Across America, Tom Wolff Ph.D. (pdf)
    American Psychological Association Convention, Invited Address, 8/12/06
    In this invited address Tom Wolff spells out the six components of Collaborative Solutions with community stories to illustrate each component.
  • My Life as a Community Activist, Tom Wolff Ph.D.
    Chapter in James G. Kelly and Anna V. Song, Community Psychology in Practice: An Oral History through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists. Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community, v. 35, no. 1. New York: Haworth Press: 2008, pages 61–80.In this chapter the author recounts his life as a social justice activist and community psychology practitioner. He shares his upbringing, family, and education and his experiences working in a variety of settings. The story shows an evolution from working with individuals to working with whole communities, from working on issues of remediation to working on prevention and finally focusing on empowerment, social change, and social justice.

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