There are several fundamental strategies available to community-based organizations for addressing community needs and problems. The main broad strategies are community organizing, community development, service delivery and advocacy. These four strategies are not mutually exclusive.

Community organizing is distinguished as the approach that involves and mobilizes the people that are directly affected by the problems that groups seek to address. It explicitly seeks to build people power and the power of an organization that is directed by its constituency. Usually community organizing is directed toward advocacy, or solving specific problems, but some groups do organizing mainly to build leadership and develop the human resources of a community without regard for winning any specific solutions to community problems.

Development is an approach to change through which organizations take ownership of physical infrastructure in the community. Usually development groups work with a variety of partner organizations, agencies and funders. Examples of development organizations include neighborhood housing and/or economic development organizations. There are some community-based organizations whose primary strategy is development that also employ organizing as a critical component of their work.

Service delivery consists of providing resources or skills to people. Employment training, food pantries, homeless shelters and some types of social work are examples of this. As with development organizations, organizations that provide services sometimes blend in community organizing components (although organizing is usually secondary to the service provision).

Advocacy is any form of promoting a solution to a problem, and it can be done without community organizing. Examples of this type of advocacy include public interest lawsuits, some types of social work, media advocacy, and one-on-one persuasion. Advocates represent a need to those in power on behalf of people who are directly affected by a problem.

Within community organizing, there are diverse approaches and models. Models vary depending upon a number of factors including: who is being organized, how confrontational or action-oriented a group’s tactics are, how groups believe social change occurs, the relative emphasis on building the organization versus winning victories, the organizational decision making process, the roles of staff and leaders, what kind of power the group is seeking to build, and external conditions.

A useful description of community organizing and some links to resources for learning more about it may be found at the Center for Community Change website. Other information on community organizing training resources may be found on the University of Wisconsin's COMM-ORG website.