Community Building Institute Training Series
Spring 2018 Guide
The Community Building Institute (CBI)Training Institute provides the foundation for service projects totransition into sustained, community-supported programs. This trainingincludes six (6)web-basedsessions facilitated by experts in community organizing. The sessions are designedfor projects in different stages of development: from the beginning assessment stages to the long-standing project seeking to evaluate its impact.
The CBI Training Seriesis a crucial resourcefor the sustainable development of community-based initiatives. This guide includes session descriptions, facilitator biographies, and a guide for how to access the webinars.
Session Title / FacilitatorSession 1: / Introduction to CBI and Community Assessment / Colleen Kane
UM Associate Director of Community Engagement and Student Programs
April 10th11 AM – 12 PM
Session 2: / Creating Community Awareness and Stakeholder Involvement / Andrea Vernon
Executive Director, Montana Campus Compact and UM Office for Civic Engagement
April 12th11 AM – 12PM
Session 3: / Building Community/Advisory Groups / Shannon Stober
Owner, Verve Exchange
April 17th 11 AM – 12PM
Session
4: / Social Media and Marketing for Nonprofits / Morgan Slemberger
University of Montana Blackstone LaunchPad
April 19th 11 AM – 12PM
Session 5: /
Strategic Planning & Implementation / Roch Turner
Director of Programs Development, Bitterroot College UM
April 24th11 AM – 12PM
Session 6: / **Evaluation for Everyday Use / Kate Chapin
University of Montana Director of Field Education
April 26th 1 PM – 2 PM
CBI Training Series Session Descriptions:
Introduction to CBI and Community Assessment
This session provides the overview of the Community Building Institute, learning objectives and desired outcomes. Needs and resources are really two sides of the same coin. Without each other, they do not buy much! In order to get a comprehensive view of your community, it is important to look at both what you have and what you need. With these things understood, you can have a positive impact on the problem you wish to address. Understanding your community in this manner will also help your organization clarify where it would like to go and how to get there.
Facilitator:Colleen Kane, Associate Director,UM Community Engagement and Student Programs
Creating Community Awareness and Stakeholder Involvement
What constitutes a stakeholder group and why are stakeholders needed? How does an organization identify potential stakeholders and, once identified, how are they approached? These questions and more will be addressed during this session. The point is to increase a community’s knowledge and awareness of community needs through education and outreach activities, providing the basis for a prospective stakeholder to buy-in. In addition to stakeholder mobilization, this session will touch on different kinds of community awareness activities, examples of events and engaging community members and stakeholders in those activities.
Facilitator: Andrea Vernon, Executive Director, Montana Campus Compact and UM Office for Civic Engagement
Building Community Advisory Groups
This webinar will help you with the next few steps in the community building process – creating an advisory group of stakeholders and learning how to facilitate their involvement. You will learn when and how to form an advisory group and the importance of a participatory approach to build a strong power base for change. The key to an effective advisory group is keeping everyone involved and on-task. You will come away from the webinar knowing the phases of advisory board development and accomplishing tasks within each phase. Creating a successful process for your project or initiative ensures a successful outcome!
Facilitator: Shannon Stober, Owner, Verve Exchange
Social Media and Marketing for Nonprofits
This webinar teaches participants how to leverage social media for cause awareness, engagement with stakeholders, fundraising, and advocacy. You will learn practical tips and tools for furthering your mission through social media and marketing.
Facilitator: Morgan Slemberger, University of Montana Blackstone LaunchPad
Strategic Planning and Implementation
Plans require action and in this field, action, is implementation. This session will explore ways of making that strategic plan become a reality, through different approaches to strategic plan implementation. Activities that fit into the strategic planning framework of volunteer generation, financial resource development and policy implementation will be touched on during this session.
Facilitator: Roch Turner, Director, Director of Programs Development, Bitterroot College UM
Evaluation for Everyday Use
Evaluation is a powerful strategy used to strengthen projects and programs and to assess their effectiveness and impact on the community. Evaluation encourages an atmosphere of participation, reflection, and learning. It helps improve programs and projects and demonstrates that investments of time and other resources achieve results. This webinar will help you understand evaluation as something we all do naturally every day and help you appreciate it as a transformative learning tool. You will come away from the webinar with some practical, user-friendly evaluation tools that apply immediately to your project, program or initiative. Facilitator: Kate Chapin, Director, UM Field Education
Meet the CBI Facilitators
Colleen Kane
Colleen Kane has been working to promote community engagement in higher education settings for the last decade. She earned her Bachelor’s in English at Western Michigan University and a Master’s in Education at Western Washington University. Her current role with the Office for Civic Engagement at UM allows her to help students engage in their communities and cultivate civic competencies through service learning coursework, volunteerism, leadership development, community outreach, and advising.
Andrea Vernon
Andrea works with campuses and communities across the state to build impactful civic engagement experiences and opportunities for students, faculty and community partners. She has spent the past 20 years working with higher education service learning and AmeriCorps National Service programs at the state and local levels. Through this work Andrea is involved with teaching, researching, and administering programs that bridge higher education and the nonprofit sector. Andrea holds a B.A. and an M.A. in sociology and received her Doctorate in Education from the University of Montana in educational leadership in which her studies focused on higher education student services, service learning and program administration.
Shannon Stober
Shannon Stober is one of Montana's premiere leadership development facilitators,impacting hundreds of individuals each year through her various workshops, retreats, keynotes, and coaching engagements. Prior to founding her consulting firm, Verve Exchange, she served as the Director of Programs with the Montana Conservation Corps, Program Manager with the Montana Campus Compact, and Training Officer with the Governor's Office of Community Service. Shannoncompleted two terms of service as an AmeriCorps *VISTA and *VISTA Leader and earned her BA from Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado.
Roch Turner
Dr. Turner is a third generation Montanan. Raised in Hamilton, Turner left for the U.S. Navy immediately following high school graduation. He served as a shipboard imagery intelligence analyst onboard the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) for four years and as a signals intelligence analyst at a NATO regional Headquarters for two years. Following the Navy, Turner opened a small business in Darby and returned to school, ultimately earning a bachelor’s degree in history, master’s in public administration, and a Ph.D. in International Education. His academic interests are focused on service to community and social inequities. He is an AmeriCorps alum, a former Franklin Project Ambassador with the Aspen Institute, and currently conducts team research on international education and independent research on educational reform.
Kate Chapin
Kate Chapin, LCSW, serves as the Director of Field Education and Adjunct Assistant Professor for the University Of Montana School Of Social Work. Kate oversees all field education placements for undergraduate and graduate Social Work students, trains field-based supervisors, and teaches undergraduate Social Work classes. Kate has also developed and managed programs for survivors of interpersonal violence in a college setting and community agency. She has worked as an independent contractor writing grants, creating evaluation plans and providing outreach for a start-up program. As a program director and an independent contractor, Kate uses evaluation data to inform her work. She believes the evaluation process can be creative, dynamic and accessible.
Morgan Slemberger
Morgan is the Operations and Marketing Managerat Blackstone Launchpad, a co-curricular, experiential, campus program designed to introduce entrepreneurship as a viable career path and develop entrepreneurial skills and mindsets through individualized coaching, ideation and venture creation support.
Webinar Training Overview:
The Community Building Institute presents online through a live, web-based presentation service, zoom.us. This platform provides opportunities for learners of all styles; screen-sharing and PowerPoint style presentations, live video and audio feed, and interactive participant communication features – real-time chat and Q&A, live polls, and more.
CBI Series recap informationis sent out via email following each presentation.
You will receive:
- a brief evaluation form of the session,
- any handouts, notes, assignments, or slides provided by the facilitator, and
- a YouTube link to the recorded session
Zoom.us Quick Guide:
Prior to joining the call, please set aside time to install software. If you have never attended a Zoom webinar, please test your connection ahead of time and ensure that you have access to audio speakers.
1)Use a computer that has internet connection and audio capabilities (built in or external). New to Zoom.us? Zoom web conferencing is easy to use. A prompt to download an extension to connect with the audio or video may occur, click “Okay” to run the download.
2)On the day of the webinar, click on the scheduled webinar URL sent to you via email a fewdays beforethe scheduled webinar.
3)ALTERNATIVELY, go to Zoom.us and click on ‘Join a Meeting’ and enter the webinar ID sent in the scheduled webinar email.
For Zoom troubleshooting help, visit:
Making the most of CBI:
CBI provides the tools- you supply the drive.
This Community Building Institute (CBI) series actively engages service members and supervisors in the community building cycle, from start to finish. Each training session includes tools to break down the big ideas of the community building cycle for practical application to each unique service site. To enhance the learning experience, short homework assignments accompany each session, providing an application framework for service members and supervisors to apply to their unique service site.
Pre-assignments, readings, and session homework is offered before a session or during a session by the session facilitator. This session work will engage members to develop a deeper understanding of the materials in relation to their service project. It is strongly encouraged to complete and participate in the discussion to get the most benefit from the series. Any assignments or readings that need to be completed ahead of time will be sent to you via email the week prior to the session.
Questions? Please contact Marci Lewandowski, MTCC Program Specialist: , 406-243-2379
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