Community Balanced Scorecards

The Community Balanced Scorecard is a new tool for implementing Effective Community Governance. Community balanced scorecards combine the results-focused community building power of the Effective Community Governance Model with the strategy alignment of balanced scorecards to empower communities to tackle their big issues and get the outcomes they need.

Community leaders, public and nonprofit managers, and citizen activists know that no single organization or sector can solve big community problems alone. Communities and regions need strong, effective collaborations to make a lasting difference on their most important issues, such as competing in the global economy, ending disparities in health or educational outcomes, protecting the environment while maintaining healthy growth, or meeting new threats to public safety. They need engaged citizens supporting priority outcomes to add legitimacy and staying power to community attempts to tackle the tough issues. And they need to measure results to learn if the community strategy is succeeding and how to adjust their efforts. Effective Community Governance is about bringing together citizens, organizational actions, and measurement for lasting community improvement. Balanced scorecards are about managing strategy. Community balanced scorecards bring the power of both approaches together to make faster, better progress toward desired community outcomes.

Public, private, and nonprofit organizations use balanced scorecards to map their strategy based on cause-and-effect assumptions, to align the entire organization behind the strategy, and to measure and improve strategic performance. They use balanced scorecards not just to manage for results, but to manage for strategic results that most advance their mission. A community balanced scorecard can bring that power to entire communities by focusing on managing a community improvement strategy involving multiple players, such as citizens, government, nonprofits, and public-minded businesses.

In sum, a community balanced scorecard:

• Engages citizens in setting strategic priorities and decision makers to commit to change;
• Leverages assets from all sectors for shared results and creates mutual accountability for results;
• Aligns community collaborators behind a common strategy for faster, measurable results.

Community Balanced Scorecards were featured in two web-based seminars by Results That Matter authors Paul Epstein and Lyle Wray in 2007, which were recorded and are available free, with or without audio, as noted below.

Community Balanced Scorecards Part 1:

• Demonstrates how the power of Effective Community Governance and balanced scorecards can be brought together;
• Describes key differences between organizational and community scorecards and conditions for success of this strategic, collaborative, participative approach to improving communities;
• Illustrates Community Balanced Scorecard concepts with sample Community Strategy Maps and strategic performance indicators based on real community and regional efforts in the U.S. and abroad.

Community Balanced Scorecards Part 2:

• Works through a detailed case study with data based on a real community collaboration to demonstrate strategic elements for success, including engaging citizens in multiple roles, and using data on leading indicators to sharpen strategies and improve implementation.
• Illustrates a web-based communication approach to support collaborative strategy management and achieve mutual accountability for results.

To Access Community Balanced Scorecard Webinar Content:

• Visit the Strategy Aligned Management-Local Government website for the full recorded presentations (with synchronized Live Meeting slides and audio*). Free registration and login to the site are required. To access webinars, click on the "Resources" link that will appear at the top of the page after you login.
• Read presentations from the webinars (PowerPoint slides only):
  January 18 (Part 1)
  February 1 (Part 2)
• Also available: Read the "Community Balanced Scorecard and Effective Community Governance" presentation from the Community Indicators Consortium Conference (March 2007, PowerPoint slides)

* Mac users may experience some difficulties accessing the audio portion of the Live Meeting software. It is still possible to review the slides through the SAM-LG site or you can review them by clicking above to read the PowerPoint presentations.

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