~by Michael Wilcox

Assistant Director and Program Leader for Community Development / Purdue Extension
Associate Director / North Central Regional Center for Rural Development (NCRCRD)

As Community Development Extension professionals, we are constantly asked by communities to provide technical assistance and guidance on how to address difficult issues. To be successful, we rely on action planning, inclusive processes, user-friendly tools, robust primary and secondary data, and relevant evaluation strategies.
 

~ by Kris Parker, Community Development Regional Educator, Purdue Extension

How effective am I at working across cultural differences? Do others see me as culturally competent? One of the key frameworks of the Navigating Difference workshop, the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity created by Dr. Milton Bennett, illustrates stages of how people experience and engage cultural difference from a monocultural mindset to a multicultural mindset. The model can be helpful for informing how we might pursue self-development in this area, as well as how we might approach helping others to develop their cultural competence.
 

~by Steve Yoder, Community Development Regional Educator, Purdue Extension

Many years ago, a mentor of mine, who was helping me develop the structure of a non-profit board, mentioned something that stuck with me. “Of all the committees that a board needs,” he said, “the most important is a governance committee.” 

In the years since, after working with leaders throughout Indiana and talking about the development of boards, commissions, and similar community groups, those words still ring true. Governance committees are vital. Without one, the overall development and management of the board and its members—their “care and feeding”—can become something that is ad hoc, fragmented, and in some cases, just left to chance.

~by Heather Strohm, Regional Educator in Community Development, Purdue Extension

When it comes to business success, focusing on survival often trumps focusing on mission and vision. However, research reminds us that organizational culture—driven by mission and vision—is ultimately a key indicator of success (Adel et al, 2007). A commonly accepted definition of organizational culture is “the collection of values, expectations, and practices that guide and inform the actions of all team members (Achievers, 2020).”

Most organizations have core values but vocalize them in different ways. The values are displayed on social media, websites and publication outlets. The unspoken assumption is that these values permeate throughout the organization—and that employees are expected to adopt them. However, the reality is that employees enter the organization with their own inherent value systems that have shaped their identities.

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer
August 19, 2021
 

The National Bureau of Economic Research is our quasi-official umpire of recessions and expansions. Last year, it marked the peak of the last decade’s expansion as February 2020. In July, it marked the trough—the economy’s low point—as April 2020. That made the pandemic recession the shortest but sharpest decline in history. The trough of a recession means that things aren’t continuing to get worse. We all know that the recovery still has a ways to go.

The recession may be over for the U.S. economy, but for Indiana local governments the recession is just about to start. That’s because the property tax and the local income tax respond to economic changes with a two-year delay. What happened to the economy in 2020 happens to local tax revenues in 2022.