Vision to Action Forum - FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is a “Vision to Action Forum”?
A: The Vision to Action Forum is a one-and-a-half day community gathering, which
brings together a broad cross-section of community members to assess their community’s
strengths and opportunities and identify problem areas, to share their ideas and hopes for
their community’s future, and to shape and launch an action plan to achieve their specific
goals.

Q: Who organizes the Forum?
A: A citizen Steering Committee, representing a cross-section of the community, works
with an Advisor / Lead Facilitator from a non-profit organization, county or borough
government, university or an independent firm to plan the event. Advisors help provide
the structure and the lead facilitation, while Steering Committee members decide how to
make the event most successful in their community, coordinating the logistics, publicity,
and cultural aspects and finding local citizens to facilitate the small group discussions.

Q: What are the over-arching goals of a Vision to Action Forum?
A: The Vision to Action Forum has three over-arching goals:
Strengthening Community Vitality
The Forum process is designed to help strengthen community, rallying renewed
community spirit and energy. During the 1-1/2 day process, local citizens gather with old
and new acquaintances to affirm the community’s strengths, identify common concerns,
and create action steps to meet these challenges.
Building Civic Engagement and Local Leadership
The Forum process brings new faces into the community discussion process. Drawing
heavily on the collective wisdom of the participants, the Forum provides a means for
citizens to work together, expands the community’s leadership pool, and creates
momentum and local spirit for positive change. In addition, the advisor offers facilitation
training to 20 community members, who then act as small-group facilitators during the
Forum event. This new pool of trained facilitators can be a valuable asset in follow-up
efforts across the community.
Promoting Sustainable Development
Through participation in The Forum, residents have the opportunity to see their
community from different perspectives and over a longer time frame. This expanded
10 Community Vision to Action Forums: An Organizers’ Guide to Participatory Planning
vision often leads to ideas for healthy new initiatives. In addition, the Forum strengthens
the local economy as community members and outside investors and funders are more
likely to support projects that have emerged from a participatory process in which the
underlying values and goals of the community have been examined.

Q: What are the actual outcomes of a Vision to Action Forum?
A: Although each Vision to Action Forum is as unique as the community it represents,
all Forums have three outcomes:
Community Projects
During the 1-1/2 day event, participants begin with big-picture visioning, and then narrow their
ideas down to concrete, prioritized action steps. These action projects are only limited by the
imagination of the community and, in other communities, have included such efforts as
launching a community newspaper, building a town trail system, organizing an industrial park,
launching a comprehensive planning effort, creating a support group for new small-business
entrepreneurs, and many, many others. Oftentimes a community opts to launch a larger scale
effort requiring significant planning time, while simultaneously launching smaller concrete
projects, thus attracting the efforts of a range of community members.
Vision to Action Forum Report
The results of the small- and large-group sessions at the Vision to Action Forum event
are all recorded and transcribed, and result in a Forum Report that is distributed to all
participants as well as town committees and the library. Far from another report that will
sit on the shelf, the Forum Report includes the many ideas and suggestions citizens
offered at the event. Once towns have successfully completed the first round of action
steps, they often go back to the report to “mine” it for additional ideas.
Strengthening a Sense of Common Purpose
Although this outcome may be the hardest to measure, it also may be the most important.
The Vision to Action Forum draws on a broad range of viewpoints, examining cultural,
economic, environmental and social issues, each in light of the other. Forums focus on
thoughtful issue identification. Rather than polarizing a community around problems, it
brings people together around solutions.

Q: Who should participate in a Vision to Action Forum?
A: Everyone! The Forum event is broadly inclusive. Forum planners work hard to make
sure that the many different groups and corners of the community are represented, in
order to make for the most vibrant, accurate discussion of the community’s past, present
and future. Well-rounded participation also ensures that the action steps that come out of
a Forum have broad citizen support and create sustainable solutions.
Although the average size of a Forum is around 120 citizens, Forums have ranged from
as small as 40 citizens to as large as 250. The most important factor is that all parts of the
community feel included and are represented.
Community Vision to Action Forums: An Organizers’ Guide to Participatory Planning 11
Each community is unique, and it is up to the Forum Steering Committee to decide
whether there are non-resident “stakeholders” who should also be included in the Forum
event (for example: seasonal residents, people who work or own businesses in town but
live elsewhere, etc.).

Q: How long does it take to plan a Forum?
A: We suggest a minimum of 3 months from the first Steering Committee meeting to
the date of the Forum event itself. This offers enough time for thorough planning and,
most importantly, allows for the word to get out to ensure broad community participation.
Some communities have taken as long as a year to plan the event, talking it up on the
beach in the summer and at meetings of all the local organizations. In general, the shorter
the planning time, the harder and faster the committee will have to work to get the word
out.

Q: Where did the Forum process originate?
A: Vital Communities and Antioch New England Institute staff developed the Vision to
Action Forum model, drawing on models developed by the Cooperative Extension
Services of the Universities of Vermont and New Hampshire and from a variety of
current thinkers on community development. We developed the model to build in an
emphasis on sustainability, community capacity building, inclusive participation, and an
integrated assessment of community issues. The Forum process has been used
successfully in scores of communities in the United States and Central Europe, from
small villages to urban neighborhoods and from single municipalities to regional clusters
of towns with similar concerns.