2018-Present

Community Cultivation Resource Library

Community Cultivation — A Field Guide

Issued by Educopia Institute in November 2018, Community Cultivation — A Field Guide provides a powerful lens that can provide both emerging and established communities with ways to understand, evaluate, and plan their own growth, change, and maturation.

The Field Guide is designed for use by directors, managers, facilitators, governance bodies, officers, and staff members. It provides mechanisms for assessing, developing, managing, and sustaining community projects, programs, and organizational operations. It also offers a snapshot of the tools, resources, and training modules Educopia regularly uses in its consulting and community-building work, including templates, workshops, and guides.

We are offering this Field Guide freely in the hope that it will empower more community facilitators and leaders to invest in the health and sustainability of their own collaborative networks. We highly recommend printing a copy of the Field Guide as it does contain meaningful “spreads” in its layout that will be best experienced in a full, printed version.

Community Cultivation Resource Library

Educopia Institute’s Community Cultivation Resource Library is a growing, open access set of tools, templates, and guidance documentation intended to support facilitators and leaders of groups, communities, and organizations of all kinds. Each resource attends to a common challenge or milestone that Educopia has helped many communities to successfully navigate. We are publishing these resources to provide support and scaffolding that facilitators can use in their daily work. 

The Resource Library is organized according to the life-cycle stage (Formation, Validation, Acceleration, or Transition) and key growth area (Vision, Infrastructure, Finances and HR, Engagement, or Governance). 

Consulting

Educopia Institute has supported communities of various shapes, sizes, forms, aims, and needs through the lens of the Community Cultivation Framework. If you are interested in applying these methods to your organization, learn more about our consulting services and contact us for more information.

Facilitator’s Guides

• Vision in Formation: Articulating Your Community’s Purpose (PDF, April 2021). Using this guide, a facilitator (community manager, project director, or other convener) can guide the initial members of a new community or network to articulate and document the shared purpose of their collaboration. This guide may also be helpful for existing communities that are in transition and reconsidering their shared purpose. You can also access Vision in Formation: Articulating Your Community’s Purpose as a Google Doc.
• Governance in Formation: Identifying Priorities for Action and Making Decisions (PDF, September 2021). After communities establish their purpose and shared goals, the question of how the community will organize, make decisions, and set expectations for members and partners becomes central to their growth and maturation. Governance in Formation provides the tools for a community to take on this work, determine priorities, and move forward with actionable next steps toward their shared goals. You can also access Governance in Formation: Identifying Priorities for Action and Making Decisions as a Google Doc.

Additional facilitator’s guides and resources are scheduled for future release.