Step One: Be Realistic

You're going to be moving to an asset-based organizational model in an environment that is heavily dominated by, and even dependent on, a risk- and deficit-based model:

• Traditional funding sources and requests for proposals (RFPs) routinely ask you to list the deficits and needs of your community, define the "problem" to be addressed, and describe how your proposed project will "solve" the problem. There are limited funding opportunities available for an asset-based approach.
• The media, too, are fixated on needs and deficits. Strengths and assets – the good news – don't register on the doom and gloom attention meter. It will be a challenge to get your asset-based message out there.
• Helping people to see their own strengths and gifts is not always easy at first. We tend to think of our "clients" (not to mention ourselves) first in terms of their needs, not their strengths. We frame our program interventions in terms of how they address these needs, not in terms of how they tap into the skills and gifts people actually have.
• Change is always difficult. The deficit model isn't going away, the culture won't be transformed overnight. The strength-based approach is a way of life, a counterweight to mechanized, industrialized trends in our consumption-oriented society. Be patient. Be in it for the long haul.