CT Community Development Institute
LISC provides training through the Connecticut Community Development Institute, a partnership among LISC, the Connecticut Housing Coalition and the Connecticut Housing Investment Fund. Over the past three years, LISC has offered CDCs training in a variety of housing and community development topics including: housing finance, site assembly, managing partnerships, neighborhood revitalization, multi-family development homeownership development, strategic planning and business planning. These courses have reached over 100 participants from 40 different organizations.
The most recent course of the Institute has been “Business Planning for Growth”. The purpose of this four month training program was to increase the capacity of our state’s Community Development Corporations and other nonprofit housing corporations. By thinking through the details of the markets, demands, resources and programs needed for successful community revitalization and housing production, groups can translate a strategic plan into a working document that produces direct results and results that can be measured.
Eight experienced Connecticut nonprofit organizations were recently selected to participate in a rigorous training for Business Plans. Each executive director attended eight full days of class room training over a five-month period, and had the consultant(s) come for field visits at each site four times. All eight groups produced a written Business Plan, showing their goals and strategies for the next five years of housing work. In some cases, the groups chose to create an overall plan which integrated all the housing programs within their organization. In others, they chose to plan for a new program initiative. In all cases, they produced a high quality Business Plan which culminated in power point presentations to each other and interested board members, funders and business plan supporters at a graduation ceremony in September.