These directions provide the most basic steps.  Feel free to email us for any questions you might have.  Also look for the upcoming book, The Case for Community-Based Anthropology, by Jill Florence Lackey.  This will be a detailed text on setting up organizations like Urban Anthropology Inc.

Step 1.  Establishing the Organization

The first step would begin with forming a board of directors among interested supporters of the practice of anthropology and selecting a name for the organization.  You will need to research whether or not this name is already taken in your state. Decide if you wish to be a membership organization or not.  You can usually access standardized bylaws on websites for both membership organizations and non-membership organizations.  Add your own rules to the standardized bylaws.

In order to apply for most grants to fund your projects, you will need to achieve a tax-exempt status under the 501(c)(3) federal codes.  You cannot do this without an attorney.  Your attorney will first incorporate your name and organization with your state, and then apply for the tax-exempt status from the federal government.  Get quotes from various law firms (at times you might succeed in getting this done pro bono).  The cost can range from $1,000 to $2,000, and the governmental bodies will also collect fees for processing the applications.  Your board will be required to do some long-distance planning in order to fill out all the appropriate forms.  The attorney will give you the instructions.  The entire process will take approximately a year, but in the meantime there is much to do.

Step 2.  Begin your studies

Your studies will be the most important thing you will ever do.  All the projects that follow should be based on rigorous ethnographic studies.  Establish a link to your closest colleges and universities with anthropology departments and ask them to send interns to your organization.  This is a very easy idea to sell, as most anthropology departments have nowhere they can send interns to expose them to the practice of anthropology.  Begin with two to three studies that you eventually hope to turn into community-contributing projects.  These can be studies of specific cultural or subcultural groups, or neighborhoods with their own distinct identity.  Set up your own human subjects committee to set ethical guidelines for the studies and to develop protocols such as informed consent forms.

Most of our studies enlist 40 to 50 key informants.  Interns will be able to do most of the interviewing, with training from the professional anthropologists (usually those with PhDs or masters degrees).  Interns can also transcribe the interviews.  They (and members of the target communities) can also help the anthropologists analyze the data.

Local funding agencies rarely fund pure research.  They, like the community members, want to see products derived from the studies.  Products can be documentaries, print material, exhibits at local museums, plays, educational programs, or tours—to name just a few.  We always highlight those products that we have developed in this rudimentary instruction sheet. 

A good start for funding sources for the studies is to go to your state Humanities Councils.  Here you do not even have to be tax exempt; hence you can apply to them before you even receive your tax-exempt status.  All grants are difficult to get.  A good rate is one out of four.  Thus plan on writing four grants for every project.  Always follow the precise directions on the grant applications.  Never think you can recycle a proposal submitted elsewhere.

Studies should continue throughout the life of your organization.  There is always something in your backyard to learn, and the cultural landscape is always changing.  Never assume these studies have already been done.  They have rarely been done.

Step 3.  Creating documentaries

For us, the documentary was the first product we selected.  It enabled us to develop other products down the road.   Not one of our founding members had even held a video camera before we began this process.  We took up a collection and sent one of our members to a class where she learned about using digital video cameras and manipulating editing systems.  She then taught several of us how to do it.  Jill Florence Lackey, our volunteer director, had another research organization and decided to purchase the cameras, attendant supplies, and an editing system for use in this organization.  Since then she has let Urban Anthropology Inc. use the equipment.  We selected a user-friendly Casablanca Avio computer for editing, and it has satisfied our requirements for 13 documentaries, to date. 

Once the data on a particular study had been analyzed, we developed themes and then a script for each documentary.  We then sent out videographers (now paid through our grants) to repeat some sections of their interviews that best represented the central themes of the studies.  These informants signed standard release forms to allow us to use their interviews in the documentary.  Standard release forms are also used when we photograph their photos or artwork.  These forms are also required for TV broadcasting.  Our documentaries ranged in length from 15 minutes to an hour.

We were fortunate that we had among our members a radio announcer who was also an accomplished musician.  For a very small fee, he became the narrator for our documentaries and also produced the musical scores.

Our first documentary was a little rough and was not accepted by any of the local TV stations for broadcast.  But we learned much from their criticism, and after that all of our documentaries appeared on local PBS and other stations.  There is rarely a week when one of our products is not broadcast somewhere in our city.  We also gave copies to local schools, community organizations, and libraries, for further dissemination of the information.  The documentaries would also play roles in the next products we produced.

Step 4.  Forming a speakers bureau

Our speakers bureau was always self-supporting (i.e., required no grant money).  We had developed a website for our services early in the organization’s history, and we posted topics that matched the specific skill sets and knowledge areas of our anthropologists.  We also used the resources from the organization in our presentations and seminars, such as our study summaries and documentaries.  This feature helped us disseminate information to community groups and provided funds for many of our anthropologists. 

Step 5. Developing tours

Once we completed studies and documentaries on a specific neighborhood or a cultural group, we organized tours around the topics.  This feature was also completely self-supporting, allowed us to disseminate information to the community, and provided funds for our anthropologists.  We contracted with local restaurants so we could offer a neighborhood or ethnic meal while the tour participants watched our documentary on the topic.  We then guided them to places of interest in the neighborhood or cultural center and provided additional information as tour guides. 

We were able to advertise our tours free of charge in the local events columns of the newspapers and on some local websites.  Over time our tours booked very well.  Some tours booked better than others.  Whenever the tour included a boat trip, we could guarantee good numbers.  The straight walking tours did not do as well, primarily because those more likely to book the tours were people near or past retirement age.

Step 6.  Developing museums

Our next step was to turn some of our tours into permanent exhibits.  We did this by developing our settlement museums.  We used the information from our studies and (with a lot of help from our interns) researched settlement patterns in neighborhoods where we had been operating tours.  We also researched specific families that stood out in particular time periods and researched their artifacts and home décor of the period.  By the time we were ready to develop a museum in a particular area, we were firmly entrenched in the neighborhood with the most community-minded gatekeepers and knew many of the residents well.  We could thus put out feelers for venues for the museums.  This was not as difficult as it may seem.  Once a neighborhood has been studied, had a documentary broadcast on its culture and history, and has been the site of tours, many stakeholders were willing to go the extra step to offer free or almost free space for us to develop a museum. 

We made a decision to actually operate a museum ourselves in only one of our neighborhoods.  The others we developed in neighborhoods where we turned them over to local community groups to operate.

Once we had a project funded, we purchased the collection (which was mainly room furniture that resembled the family from a particular period), applied some home décor skills (that some of us had), and develop interesting (and at times amusing) scripts for museum tours.  Without the tours, the settlement rooms mean little.  They need to be tied to the actual stories of the time.  We also had exhibit areas where we presented special displays, such as prehistoric history of the neighborhood area.

 Step 7.  Community development and advocacy

We selected four neighborhoods in our city for museums and ongoing community development.  We participated in both creative and routine projects within these neighborhoods, such as the development of ethnic street markets to publishing local newspapers to organizing block watches.  We collaborated with the other organizations and helped develop policy, such as facilitating the development of low income housing in the areas or helping save the health of local waterways.  As we played roles in changing these neighborhoods we also updated our documentaries and tours to reflect the positive changes.  Much of this helps to build community pride in the areas where people live.

Step 8.  School programming

With our documentaries and the knowledge from our studies, we developed a series of school programs to take to local elementary, middle, and high school students.  The programs offered presentations on cultural groups in their own back yard, parts of the films we had created on these groups, games that reflected the groups’ cultures, and visits to our museums that included more sensory information on the groups.  These projects helped disseminate information on all the cultural groups in our city and also provided part time jobs for anthropologists.

Working with both public and private schools has been invaluable to our organization, as it has given us an opportunity to provide children with meaningful information about history and cultural diversity that they might never have gotten elsewhere.  By providing this information in a fun and positive atmosphere, students are encouraged to understand and respect cultural differences and to have pride in their own cultural identity.

Step 9.  Training others to do the same

Our director, Jill Florence Lackey, taught at Marquette University’s College of Professional Studies.  She was able to collaborate with Marquette in producing a certificate program that taught other anthropologists and those interested in anthropology to replicate much of the work described above, and to further disseminate the practice of anthropology across the city and beyond.  Courses included research methods, proposal writing, community organizing diverse neighborhoods, and historical preservation.  Other programs are in development.