We exist to make your Change-Making work more effective. Effective strategies start with accurate diagnoses. It’s why we have been thrilled to offer the Flourishing Neighborhood Index (FNI) to clients for the past several years. The FNI measures the health of your community across economic, social, and structural indicators. 

The index is designed to assess your neighborhood holistically, giving you the key information to make strategic, place-based plans alongside your neighbors. Because neighborhood buy-in is essential, community members themselves conduct the FNI. Neighbors collect FROM the neighborhood and FOR the neighborhood. We want to avoid a situation where neighbors are tempted to “airbrush” their responses to surveys because they see a nonprofit worker in front of them. 

In this way, the FNI can give you a clearer, more granular picture than most assessments. The process builds trust with residents, who use their own skills and expertise to complete the FNI. 

“The Index is helping us see both the places and the people around us with greater breadth and depth of understanding…coalescing neighbors and partners around particular areas for growth.” – Rusty Langford of City Fields in Cleveland, Tennessee.

The Lupton Center will walk you through the entire FNI process in 3 phases: assessment, alignment, activation.

Assessment: Become an expert on your neighborhood. You’ll gain valuable insights into the state of your community through guided evaluation, personal coaching, and a set of data-rich, interactive maps that tell the unique story of your neighborhood.

Alignment: Unite stakeholders around a common vision. You’ll utilize neighbor-to-neighbor surveying, staff training and mentoring, and in-depth analysis of your Index data to articulate the voice, vision, and capacity of your community.

Activation:  You’ll develop and implement a long-term plan to meet the neighborhood’s social, structural, and economic needs. Throughout, you’ll harness the Lupton Center’s expert counsel, ongoing group learning and video coaching, and data visualization and mapping tools to measure and evaluate impact.

If you believe the Holistic Neighborhood Development model can make a difference in your community and want to understand the critical factors in your neighborhood, take a look at the FNI. We stand ready to build a clear, effective long-term strategy for your development work. Even better, it will be a plan that involves neighbors and cultivates the trust of local stakeholders. 

For more information about FNI, click here. If you’re ready to schedule a preview of the FNI and hear how to get started, click here.

 

---