Definition of Community Organization

Murray G. Ross (1955)

Community organization is a process by which a community identifies its needs or objectives, ranks them, develops the confidence and will to work at them, finds resources to address them, takes action, and, in doing so, extends and develops cooperative and collaborative attitudes within the community.

Eduard C. Lindeman (1921)

Community organization is that phase of social organization which constitutes a conscious effort on the part of a community to control its affairs democratically and to secure the highest services from its specialists, organizations, agencies, and institutions by means of recognized interrelations.

Walter W. Pettit (1925)

Community organization is perhaps best defined as assisting a group of people to recognize their common needs and helping them to meet these needs.

Russell H. Kurtz (1940)

Community organization is a process dealing primarily with program relationships and thus to be distinguished in its social work setting from those other basic processes, such as casework and group work. Those relationships of agency to agency, of agency to community, and of community to agency reach in all directions from any focal point in the social work picture. Community organization may be thought of as the process by which these relationships are initiated, altered, or terminated to meet changing conditions, and it is thus basic to all social work.

Wayne McMillen (1947)

Community organization is, in its generic sense, a deliberately directed effort to assist groups in attaining unity of purpose and action. It is practiced, though often without recognition of its character, wherever the objective is to achieve or maintain a pooling of the talents and resources of two or more groups in behalf of either general or specific objectives.

C. F. McNeil (1954)

Community organization for social welfare is the process by which the people of a community, as individual citizens or as representatives of groups, join together to determine social welfare needs, plan ways of meeting them, and mobilize the necessary resources.

Kramer and Specht (1975)

Community organization refers to various methods of intervention whereby a professional change agent helps a community action system composed of individuals, groups, or organizations to engage in planned collective action in order to deal with special problems within the democratic system of values.

Community Organizing and Public Health (2025)

Community organizing is the process by which people who have a common identity or purpose unite to address shared concerns, mobilize resources, and take collective action to influence policies and practices affecting their well-being.

Principles of community organization