Heart & Soul Handbook: Designing Your Project

Resource Description

This chapter, Designing your Heart & Soul Community Planning Project, lays out the steps and considerations necessary for designing a successful community project. Starting by laying a solid groundwork, a community can then explore theie values and goals, choose a viable plan of action, and monitor the progress, following the four general steps making up the Heart & Soul process. This chapter also provides tips and tools from the Foundation’s on-the-ground experience to help a community find appropriate resources implement their project.

In 2008, the Orton Family Foundation pioneered Heart & Soul Community Planning, a process that has so far been piloted in selected communities in New England and the Rocky Mountains. The Foundation is currently in the process of developing a H&S Handbook that describes the entire process, first explaining the reasoning behind Heart & Soul Community Planning, then walking through the steps to achieve an inclusive, enduring, long-term community plan. With detailed descriptions of new tools and methods and examples from on the ground, this handbook is a resource for planners and citizens alike.