| Summary: | Leadership development programs have documented positive impacts on individuals, but there
is much less evidence of long-term community impacts. To explore the relationship between
leadership development and community capacity, interview data from participants in a 1987 multicounty
leadership program were collected and analyzed. Community impacts were assessed using
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to determine impacts on community capacity as defined by community
capitals. The findings demonstrate that participants contributed greatly to specific projects from
which the community benefited. The impact on capacity as measured by the changes in community
capitals is not as strong, in that the participants did not explicitly link the different projects.
Keywords: Appreciative Inquiry, capacity building, Community Capitals Framework, evaluation,
leadership development
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