Our technical assistance workshops have helped 50+ communities. Apply today!

Indianapolis 1
The Culture Trail of Indianapolis, IN—one of 19 communities to receive technical assistance from Smart Growth America in 2014. Photo via visitindy.com.

As we announced earlier this month, Smart Growth America is accepting applications for our 2015 free technical assistance workshops now through October 23. You’ve already seen how our 12 ready-to-go workshops are designed to help communities tackle local development challenges. But have you visited our Past Workshops page recently?

Our chronicle of past workshops is a great resource to see how local leaders and residents across the country have worked with Smart Growth America to develop the knowledge, tools, and strategies to make their communities more livable, sustainable and vibrant places through both our free technical assistance program and our fee-for-service workshops.

To date, our technical assistance program has provided workshops to over 50 urban, suburban, and rural communities in 34 states from Hawaii to Maine. Want to see how Tacoma, WA’s experience might help your community? How about Salisbury, MD or Des Moines, IA? You can find information about the context, content, and outcomes of each of our past workshops on the past workshops page.

Organized by workshop type, the page allows you to quickly navigate to the workshops that interest you. Simply click on one of the twelve topics at the top of the page to jump to those workshops. You can also click on any workshop link to learn more about it specifically. On every community’s workshop page, you will find information about the community and the goals of their workshop, followed by a “Workshop Materials” section at the bottom of the page. These materials include:

  • Tool description: A one or two-page document describing the workshop the community received. SGA modifies each workshop to fit communities’ unique needs, but this description is the starting point we work from for each workshop.
  • Evening presentation: An end-of-day presentation to the public providing a high-level overview of the workshop content.
  • Next steps memo: A report to the community, from the workshop instructor, to summarize the issues discussed at the workshop and make recommendations about the community’s next steps.
  • Progress reports: Brief progress reports to SGA submitted one month, six months, and twelve months after communities receive their next steps memo. The reports show how communities work to implement the ideas they discuss at the workshop.

Have ideas about how our workshops can help you address development challenges in your community? There are two avenues for assistance:

Smart Growth America is currently accepting applications for our 2015 free technical assistance workshops. Made possible through grant support from the U.S. EPA Office of Sustainable Communities under their Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program, this program allows communities to apply for one of twelve “ready-to-go” technical assistance workshops. Any unit or subdivision of local government, Indian tribe or regional government is eligible to apply. Learn more about our free technical assistance workshops >>

In addition to our annual free workshops, SGA’s technical assistance is available year-round on a fee-for-service basis. Our expert staff can help your community achieve its development goals. Learn more about our workshops for hire >>

Technical assistance