Southern Bancorp: Building Communities. Changing Lives.

Southern’s community development approach begins by facilitating a community strategic planning process to arrive at a unified community vision, with specific goals and action steps. Many development efforts stop here, as consultants leave their report with the community and are never heard from again. In contrast, Southern uses its strong local presence to work with the community on a daily basis to implement the strategic plan, matching community priorities to resources and building local capacity to effectively utilize these resources.

Southern’s investment in strategic planning processes ensures that the full range of the community’s interconnected challenges are addressed in concert, including the five pillars of community development: economic development, education, health care, housing, and leadership development. The strategic plans also ensure that realistic, results-oriented action steps are outlined for achieving each community goal, and the process encourages and enables residents to drive the process of revitalization. Community engagement and leadership, backed by the resources of Southern, encourages outside investment—both philanthropic and traditional—which enables Southern to achieve tremendous leverage of its investment.

For details of community planning processes facilitated by Southern, follow the links below:

• Delta Bridge Project
• Clark County Strategic Plan
• Small Cities Technical Assistance