Community Development – 5 Steps To Establishing A Corporation

If you’re one who’s looking to make a difference in your neighborhood, then a Community Development Corporation would be a good idea indeed. These Corporations have been essentially developed for various number of reasons, but at the end of the day they have got 1 common goal and that’s to help the neighborhoods. Actually you should understand that a Community Development Corporation is a non-profit organization and had been established under the IRS code 501(C)(3). Mainly these are meant to be established in areas that have got a low income. These corporations actually go on to help develop and expand educational programs, rehabilitate neighborhoods, create job opportunities. Community efforts and problems can be effectively handled through a Community Development Corporation.

Go ahead and establish a Community Development Corporation

Here are a few steps you could follow if you’re really interested in establishing a Community Development Corporation –

Go for Community Assessment:

 
Establishing a Community Development Corporation requires that you go for a community assessment. For this you’d have to survey the business owners and residents of the community. You should also check and see whether any other local college or university has conducted the same and what’re the things that might need to be addressed. Visit each website to see what has been going on.

Get Hold of Volunteers:

 
Understand this for a fact that all efforts for community development would require volunteers. You should try and recruit volunteers from local businesses. Do make it a point to encourage the residents to participate. For this you could hold public meetings. After you have met, then put forward the goals, formulate a mission statement as well as develop a set of by-laws. Now, the volunteers and members need to be responsible for fundraising which would generate a cash flow and only then can the goals be truly achieved.

File the necessary Paperwork:

 
The next step obviously involves filing of paperwork and it completely depends on where you live. There isn’t any federal entity for Community Development Corporation and hence the requirements of individual states could very well vary. However, there’s some funding available for Community Development Corporations and this is again funneled through other agencies. As for the eligibility requirements, then each agency has got its own.

Open a Bank Account:

 
Once you’ve managed to establish a 501(C)(3), go ahead and open a bank account. There are chances that you might require an accountant or at least a volunteer who’d manage funds for your organization. So take steps accordingly.

Go ahead with Fundraising:

 
Finally, with all the above discussed preparations taken you can go forward with fundraising for your Community Development Corporation. You should be rather organized and put together various groups of volunteers for the purpose of fundraising projects.

If you follow the 5 steps that have been discussed above, it shouldn’t be a problem for you to actually work on and put up a Community Development Corporation. It does take a little bit of convincing skill to recruit volunteers yes, but it’s very much achievable.