Further Reading — Chapter 31: Grant Writing for Community Development

Community-development funding varies by place, program, and time, and the field's practices evolve. Treat this chapter as durable craft and verify specifics with your funders and your local government — especially the local CDBG and place-based funding processes, which are where much community-development money is actually allocated.

The Funding (start local)

  • Your local and state government's community-development programs (CDBG and others). The cornerstone place-based public funding, allocated through local, participatory processes — engage your city/county's CDBG planning and public hearings (Section 31.1, Going Deeper).
  • HUD, USDA Rural Development, and EPA environmental-justice programs. Federal place-based funders for housing, rural development, and environmental justice (Section 31.1). Much flows through states and localities.
  • Community development financial institutions (CDFIs). Specialized lenders and financial institutions serving underserved communities — part of the capital ecosystem beyond grants (Section 31.1).
  • Community foundations and place-based philanthropy. Funders rooted in and committed to specific places, often deeply valuing resident leadership (Section 31.1, and Chapter 18).

On "With, Not About" and Resident Leadership

  • Community-organizing and resident-leadership literature. The foundation for genuine community leadership and power-building — the heart of the threshold concept (Sections 31.2, 31.6).
  • Chapter 21 of this book (International Funding). Localization and local leadership — the international cousin of "with, not about" (Section 31.2).
  • Chapter 25 of this book (DEI). Authentic equity, power-sharing, and the rejection of the savior narrative — directly underlying this chapter (Sections 31.2–31.3).
  • The decolonizing/community-led development critique. The reckoning with development done to communities, and the case for community authorship (Sections 31.1–31.2).

On Asset-Based Community Development

  • Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) resources. The framework for identifying and building on community assets rather than only cataloging deficits — the foundation of a strong needs assessment (Section 31.3).
  • Chapter 8 of this book (Needs Assessment). The needs-as-argument craft that becomes a resident-led, asset-based community needs assessment (Section 31.3).
  • Participatory and community-based research and mapping methods. Practical approaches for resident-led assessment and asset mapping (Section 31.3).

On Coalitions and Place-Based Sustainability

  • Chapter 23 of this book (Collaborative Proposals). The coalition craft — justify partners, leadership and coordination, MOUs — applied to community-development coalitions (Section 31.4).
  • Chapter 14 of this book (Sustainability and Dissemination). The sustainability principles, here adapted to places without a tax base (Section 31.5).
  • Resources on community land trusts, community ownership, and asset-building. Strategies for building lasting community assets that generate value and resist displacement (Sections 31.5–31.6).
  • Literature on building community power and capacity. The "power" half of "places and power" — how community-development work can build lasting community capacity (Section 31.6).

Connections Within This Book

  • Chapter 19 (Government Grants). The formula-funds, pass-through, and local-administration structure that CDBG and place-based public funding sit within.
  • Chapter 28 (Nonprofits). The community-based organizations that anchor community-development coalitions.
  • Chapters 21 and 25 (International Funding; DEI). Localization and authentic equity — the threads this chapter weaves into domestic place-based work.

A note on the grant writer's role

This chapter reframes the grant writer's identity in community development: not the expert who writes for a community, but a skilled ally who helps the community articulate and fund the future it authors. The most useful orientation for this work is humility about authorship — putting your craft in service of community leadership, amplifying rather than replacing community voice, and measuring success by how much the community owns the work. The durable principles (write with the community, build on assets, ensure community leadership, build places and power, make honest sustainability cases) hold across community development's many sub-areas — housing, economic development, environment, health — even as the specific programs and funders vary.