ABCD Pioneer Leaves Global Legacy

Coady Institute staff and graduates are saddened by the death of ABCD Institute (DePaul University) co-founder John McKnight. McKnight coined the term Asset-based Community Development (ABCD) in 1993 with the release of the book, Building Communities from the Inside Out. Seeing people as agents of change, rather than defined solely by their disadvantaged situation, McKnight showed strengths where others saw weaknesses, value where others saw deficiency.

Building Communities from the Inside Out, co-authored with Jody Kretzmann, examined research in 200 urban neighbourhoods across the United States. They found those neighborhoods able to positively change their circumstances and sustain that change over time, had characteristics in common: the initiatives started small, and they largely drew on assets and resources that already existed within the neighborhoods, including the capacity to organize and mobilize.

“I’ve only met one other person in my life that has been able to so clearly see and articulate what is upside down in this world and needing to be put right-side up,” Gord Cunningham former Coady Institute Executive Director says. “His ideas about community (and its counterfeits) literally changed the way I – and millions of other people – looked at world.”

McKnight’s ideas reshaped the practice of community development in North America. What had been a predominant focus on addressing community needs and problems with government agencies and programs as the driver, began to shift to a focus on identifying and mobilizing community assets with local associations as the driver. In what McKnight began to refer to as an ABCD process, leaders of local associations almost always led the change process, able to connect people and assets in new ways with government agencies and institutions playing supportive rather than directive roles.
McKnight first visited Coady Institute in 1999 with more than 50 Diploma in Development Leadership participants attending his talk. It was a transformative moment for many. A group of participants pushed the Institute to develop research, publications, and curricula that would better contextualize an ABCD approach within rural and urban communities in the Global South

Coady colleagues also saw a new articulation of the Antigonish Movement in McKnight’s vision of ABCD. They could draw a straight line from Moses Coady’s promotion of adult education and cooperative development and his call for communities in Nova Scotia to “use what they have to secure what they have not.” Using McKnight’s practical tools, community leaders can identify and mobilize the assets they have to address issues such as community health and wellbeing, neighborhood security, and economic development.

McKnight would later say, “I think we have always felt that there is only one other institution that we strongly relate to, and it is Coady because it is the place that took this work around the world. Whereas we are people who just kept it on the North American continent, so we are forever indebted to Coady for doing that.”

In the past decade, as organizations and individuals have adopted McKnight’s methodologies, international conferences on ABCD have taken place in Australia, India, the United Kingdom and in Canada (2009) at Coady Institute. In 2018, a South African ABCD network of Coady graduates hosted a large ABCD Imbizo (Zulu for gathering) in Port Elizabeth attended by 250 participants from more than 25 countries.
McKnight has continued to engage newer Coady staff and participants as recently as this past year, taking the time to have meaningful conversations and offer advice to them as Coady’s ABCD work has continued globally and with Indigenous communities across Canada and the United States.

“In early 2023, we were delighted that he agreed to be a guest speaker alongside Cormac Russell in an ABCD webinar we hosted,” Eileen Alma, Coady Institute Executive Director, says. “They were able to share the findings from their book, The Connected Community.  Discovering the Health, Wealth, and Power of Neighborhoods (2022).”

“Even then, he was much more interested in learning from our participants, getting their insights and reflections and continuing to prioritize the knowledge and experiences of community leaders over his own.  His compassion and convening power were truly inspirational.”

John McKnight will be deeply missed but his work continues to motivate generations of community leaders, practitioners and educators. We send our condolences to his family and friends and the ABCD community worldwide.

Coady Institute’s approach to adult education remains practice-focused and participatory, informed by learner-centered and asset-based methods. Coady offers an online course on Asset-Based and Community-Led Development Principles and an on-campus certificate course in Asset-Based and Community-Led Development: Theory and Practice. ABCD tools and approaches continue to be used throughout Coady’s educational courses and within various projects taking place around the world.