346 Ecological Restoration and Design
a practice springing from the broadform mineral deed, whereby land purchasers in
the early 1900s were able to buy up hundreds of thousands of acres of mineral
rights. KFTC was instrumental in getting legislation approved to set up Universal
Service Funds as well as in getting the land around the historic Pine Mountain
Settlement school declared off-limits to strip mining. In 2001, KFTC had its 20th
anniversary.
All of these instances involved confronting an outside public or private entity
in order to stop a project or policy deemed detrimental to the inhabitants of the
local community. Organizers from outside the local community and support from
the parent organization are important elements in the local chapter’s success against
such outside forces.
Factors in Effective Change
We will now examine two important factors in all three models in community
development – linkages with the outside and the planning process – to see differ-
ences and similarities among the models.
Linkages for community change
None of the models of community development that we have presented deny the
need to obtain outside resources in order for community development to take
place. In the technical assistance and the conflict approaches, an outside person or
group of people are central to the process. In both cases, an objective of the effort
is often to obtain resources from the outside. The self-help approach would appear
to be one that emphasizes reliance on local resources. However, as will be seen, the
ability to mobilize local resources is often a proof to those who control outside
resources that the self-help effort is serious. Thus, there is a complementarity
between mobilizing local resources and the ability to obtain resources from outside
the community. Creating strategic partnerships is necessary in all cases (Blakely
and Bradshaw, 2002). This is particularly true under conditions of very limited
outside resources because those who control such resources are especially keen to
ensure that their funds are well spent. What better place to spend them than on a
project that has shown it can obtain resources?
Financial capital from the outside is becoming more and more scarce as both
federal and state governments deal with mammoth deficits by cutting funding for
social programmes, including those that benefit rural communities. As the endow-
ments of most foundations have declined with the stock market, so have possibili-
ties of grants from both private and public sources have declined. There are a
variety of state and regional venture capital funds being started by both private-
and public-sector groups, which can be an important input into community devel-
opment.