8: Maintaining Momentum and Capturing Impact

Module 8 Maintaining Momentum & Capturing Impact
Successful community development projects pay attention to techniques for maintaining momentum. Capturing impact is an important corollary to maintaining momentum, because it helps participants monitor their own progress. Sharing accountability is an important way to keep everyone on the same page.

Successful ECAP processes include ways for everyone to report progress, share results and celebrate successes. At the same time, these approaches provide a means of trouble-shooting if something is going awry.

This type of sharing can be done on-line or in person, as often as weekly among Steering Committee members, perhaps monthly or every other month among Task Forces and Working Groups, publicly through news and social media when events warrant public attention.

ECAP is a learning process that relies on good communication and transparency among collaborators in the community. Such processes build trust and strengthen relationships, thus reinforcing the value of broad-based community engagement and strengthening the chances for success.

If the various working groups see themselves as reinforcing one another, the sense of community is strengthened and the value of collaboration is reconfirmed. Below is a list of ideas for maintaining momentum, synthesized from successful community development processes, including ECAP. This list was provided by the Heartland Center for Leadership Development.