Abundance, not scarcity. Assets, not needs. Opportunities, not deficiencies.
Developed by John McKnight and John Kretzmann, Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) is the foundation upon which Nebraska Community Foundation has approached its community development work for over 25 years. ABCD looks to “what’s strong to fix what’s wrong” and operates on the belief that every community and every person has assets to offer… sometimes they just aren’t so obvious.
In this video, NCF’s Director of Community Development Philanthropy, Greta Leach, takes us through the basics of ABCD, how it informs NCF’s approach, plus the Community Capitals Framework, a concept coined in Rural Communities by Cornelia Butler Flora, Jan L. Flora, and Stephen P. Gasteyer.
Click here to listen to the podcast Greta mentions at the beginning of the video.
Download the Community Asset Map Activity and follow along as Greta takes us through a series of questions to identify the many assets – natural, financial, human, cultural and otherwise – in your community.