Community-based nonprofit organizations play vital roles in addressing local and neighborhood-level challenges. At the same time, these organizations carry out their work within a complex network of public and nonprofit entities that overlap in their jurisdictions, goals, and approaches.
This course aims to deepen your understanding of how community-based nonprofit organizations participate in local and neighborhood-level governance to effectively to address locally-scaled public problems. In this course, we take the view that we can understand the social and economic processes that affect communities and that we can use collective action and public policy to solve problems and improve quality of life. By the end of this course, students will have demonstrated their ability to:
--- Analyze the problems community change agents face in mobilizing people and resources into effective organizations;
--- Develop strategies by which community-based nonprofit leaders can build effective organizations, solve public problems and influence public policy;
--- Evaluate the implications of public policy at the state and local levels for community-based organizing
This course meets in a weekend intensive format.