Community service projects are normally run in society as part of efforts of coordinating philanthropic and charitable giving. As a philanthropist, you may opt to give towards existing community service projects or even start your own. Here are the most important steps to consider when starting and running a community service project.
Establish a Need in the Community
The first thing to do is to conduct a ground evaluation of the various needs that the community may be facing. Doing the research ensures that any community service project to be established will be available to the locals in terms of helping them to achieve the desired goal and meet a given need.
Define What You Can Do in Response
From there, you’ll want to determine what you can competently do in response to the established problem in the community. This may need you to evaluate the kind of skills and talents you have, your financial capacity, the amount of time you can dedicate to community work and any other resources at your disposal. This evaluation gives you an idea on the scale of the project to undertake.
Selecting a Project
You should then focus on coming up with an ideal project in consultation with various other stakeholders. In evaluating and coming up with a project, you may need to assess how much of an impact the project will be to the locals as well as to conduct community engagement and consultation with the locals. Depending on the agreed project, you may need to bring onboard other philanthropists and charity donors who will donate skills, manpower, and resources to the project.
Developing a Project Plan
The next thing you should do is to come up with a project plan that defines the scope of the project and various other parameters such as funding, how long the project will take, and the prospected scale of benefit the locals will have.
Seeking Volunteer-Based Partnerships
You may want to execute your project in partnership with other volunteers who would provide the much-needed manpower. In this regard, you should target working with persons who have ambitions and passion for community service projects.
Project Management
Project management is generally your final phase. This requires a set of community project management skills, including the ability to raise capital, budgeting, confronting project challenges and raising awareness among other valuable social skills.