Honoring asset-based community development:
On Monday, April 28, Northwestern faculty, staff, and community members gathered to honor the work of John McKnight with an Institute for Policy Research (IPR) panel titled “Community Empowerment: Celebrating the Work of John McKnight.” McKnight, a Northwestern faculty emeritus who passed away in 2024, was a pioneer in community organizing and civil rights. He revolutionized community development with his asset-based approach, which emphasized building upon a community’s strengths to create meaningful change. This philosophy, later coined the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) model, transformed how researchers and policymakers engage with communities, and remains a fundamental principle of CCE’s and IPR’s work.
To discuss his legacy, long-time colleagues of McKnight – Rob Donahue, Director of the Center for Civic Engagement; Andrew Gordon, University of Washington Professor Emeritus and IPR Faculty Emeritus; and Dan Lewis, Northwestern Professor Emeritus & IPR Faculty Emeritus – discussed the impact McKnight had on civically engaged learning and research at Northwestern and beyond, in a panel moderated by Andrew Papachristos, Director of the Institute for Policy Research.
From serving as a scribe during Martin Luther King’s negotiations with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley to mentoring a young Barack Obama, McKnight’s six decades of work addressed discrimination and injustice and shaped public policy and neighborhood change. After completing his undergraduate degree at Northwestern, McKnight served in the military before returning to Chicago in the late 1960s to support community organizing efforts. Later, McKnight was invited to join Northwestern’s faculty to help create the Center for Urban Affairs, which later became the Institute for Policy Research, to support community-based work in Chicago.
In shaping IPR, McKnight led with his guiding belief in asset-based strategies for community development—a simple yet transformative idea that every community possesses strengths and resources that can be harnessed to create sustainable, long-term change. In the early years, McKnight’s team would go into Chicago neighborhoods and talk directly to local residents. Instead of focusing on the deficits common to large cities, they encouraged researchers and organizers to focus on strengths and involve residents in decision-making. They then recommended policy shifts and further methods of engagement that could lead to collective understanding and empowerment. This philosophy became the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) model and was adopted and implemented by practitioners and policymakers worldwide.
The success of the ABCD approach created a paradigm shift in how higher education understood community development and engagement. Inspired by McKnight, some of his long-time collaborators at Northwestern, including Rob Donahue, Jody Kretzmann Dan Lewis, wondered how students could better use their four years in school to become more active and knowledgeable about issues beyond the classroom and develop a commitment to community work. They launched the Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) to create a space for shared learning that could mutually benefit students and local communities. The Center integrates academics with meaningful volunteer work and community partnerships to make civic engagement a cultural norm at Northwestern. CCE’s work aims to connect and build upon the assets of the university and local communities to inspire change.
It is through the many individuals who have worked with CCE, IPR, and the ABCD Institute (now at DePaul University) that McKnight’s legacy lives on, as these organizations facilitate community-led change, connect aspiring changemakers with community partners, and promote a new way of thinking about community development and empowerment.