Loudoun Forward has made progress toward achieving many of the goals it set out for itself two years ago. They brought together a diverse Advisory Committee, designed and launched a website, and engaged policy makers, business and civic leaders, and others in discussion on issues of importance in the community. However, according to the project’s founders, they have not measurably improved the community’s deliberative process or increased public involvement in policymaking, both key goals.
On the positive side, says co-founder Tamar Datan, they have gotten the community thinking about the role of the arts in the county’s economy and quality of life, the subject of their first issue brief. As a result of their conversations with key business leaders, there now is serious deliberation about developing a signature performing arts center in the county.
Loudoun Forward founders had hoped to foster a deeper discussion of many more issues, but admit they’ve been hampered by a lack of staff capacity. Their commitment to producing reports of the highest quality resulted in a much-delayed publication and a loss of momentum, when the initial white paper they commissioned fell short of their aspirations and needed major editing.
Along the way, they have gleaned several key lessons: They regret that they didn’t seek matching local funds from the start. And they wish they had more accurately estimated the real amount of time, effort and staff required to launch such a project. And, “although we’ve been very engaged in writing and speaking out on a range of local policy issue and community concerns,” says Datan, “that activity wasn’t apparent because it wasn’t documented online. “
“We would also have been much more aggressive in seeking out partners, particular like-minded citizens with content to post, organizations that share our mission, and potential supporters,” says Datan. One partnership that fell through was with radio station WAGE, whose new owners eliminated all local information programming. Loudoun Forward has reached to the Housing Advisory Board to contribute to its second issue brief about affordable housing in Loudoun, the fastest growing county in the U.S. Co-founder Dave Wiseman says he expects to publish that paper in early 2008, following a re-design of the Loudoun Forward website in late 2007.
While Loudoun Forward still intends to mail its white paper on the arts out to Loudoun ZIP codes, they plan to upgrade their website using Web 2.0 technology, making the project more accessible and interactive.
“In many ways, Loudoun Forward has just barely gotten off the ground. We firmly believe it can and will become a powerful tool for advancing civic discourse in this county once we succeed in providing more published content and more opportunities for live and online interactions. We know there is an appetite for this kind of journalism and a compelling need. We simply have not yet assembled the horsepower needed to fully implement the vision, and therefore our growth has been modest.”
