Working to Strengthen, Unite, and Advance Special Districts
The American Association of Special Districts was founded to address the challenges and needs of all special district governments across the nation by empowering leadership in every state through advocacy, data expertise, and by building strong associations.
The American Association of Special Districts has four primary focuses, each primary elements of fulfilling our mission.
Each of our elements/goals appeal to different communities of special districts’ stakeholders. AASD, through a range of programming, fosters synergies and partnerships that altogether strengthen, unite, and advance America’s 35,000+ special districts.
Building & Investing in Special Districts Associations
The American Association of Special Districts establishes and sustains special districts’ forums and networks – both among themselves and with professional service providers, which offer a range of compliance, development, goods, and more.
These forums, with establishment, are independent, sustainable organizations that lead state-focused advocacy efforts – all to further federal cohesion among special districts and to build districts’ broader, national capacities. Further, we believe special districts learn best from each other. Associations directly foster this special collaboration for best practices and more.
Establishing associations serving all types of special districts in states without such organizations advances AASD’s drive to resolve intergovernmental issues that exist across states for special districts, to elevate special districts’ visibility, and to advance standing in the local government advocacy space.
How Association-Building is Critical to Other Elements of Our Work
Special districts are creatures of their states, which places issues of awareness, recognition, and understanding squarely onto how states gather, frame, and report their local special district government data for broader consumption – such as to aid U.S. Census Bureau surveys of local governments, policymakers, academia, and especially in the realm of business-to-government services.
Further, special districts face collective state-level policy challenges, but few associations exist across the nation for special districts to address these issues as they arise.
Altogether, developing strong associations of special districts in their states is a pillar of AASD’s work.
Investing in the Power of Local, State & Regional Associations
Regardless of whether a special districts’ association is in its development stage, or whether the organization has been providing services for 80 years or 80 days – the American Association of Special Districts invests organizational resources to empower districts’ associations’ ability to deliever for their members and stakeholders.
Capacity Building for Local & State Advocacy
We work diligently to understand the roots of intergovernmental challenges that exist across states for special districts. We aim to pose well-grounded and well-vetted policy solutions for districts’ to pursue at state levels to advance their standing as a local government in their states, and to build synergy on common policy issues and governance needs.
The American Association of Special Districts invests resources to ensure special districts, through developing alliances and associations, have strong capacity to achieve local and state goals. Through this work, across states, AASD builds the overall national capacity for special districts to pursue collective national issues.
Research & Public Data Leadership
The American Association of Special Districts is the hub for research and analysis on intergovernmental issues impacting special districts’ ability to access state and federal resources afforded to general governments, and impacting districts’ ability to provide services in their communities.
AASD marries data-driven efforts with capacity building and association development efforts to complete the ecosystem of policy and advocacy support that special districts need to directly address the challenges they face.
Analyzing public data available for special districts at the local, state, and federal levels, AASD is able to establish trends, identify intergovernmental pinchpoints, and amplify the story of America’s special districts. Though this work, AASD’s ultimate objective is to enhance the Census Bureau’s, and federal agencies in general, recognition and understanding of special districts. These insights are also well-suited for state organizations seeking numbers to fulfill thier advocacy and public awareness needs.
Diving deeper, AASD’s objectives include to collaboratively address significant issues with government reporting needs including blocking standardized local government reporting, representation and classification of special districts in federal surveys of local government, and ensuring efforts to coordinate a multi-prong approach to addressing data representation.
Addressing data leadership from a national association, by way of individual state associations, will allow AASD to provide data governance and normalization strategy while empowering individualized state data collection needs and preferences.
Fostering a Trusted Professional Services Network
The American Association of Special Districts fosters a trusted network of professional good and service providers for special districts.
Combining all elements of AASD’s work to build associations, build capacity, and lead data-driven efforts fostering understanding of special districts, we provide professionals interested to expand their business-to-government, or B2G, approach to effectively include the America’s most common form of local government.
Beyond access to market/sector insights and trends to best engage with special districts, AASD provides opportunities for Professional Members to directly access districts, where they are, through engagement at regional Summits/conferences, workshops, webinars, and a biweekly newsletter.
AASD considers Professional Members to be subject matter experts on a range of matters special districts must pay mind to – including, but not limited to, governance, accounting, municipal finance, procurement and cooperative purchasing, communications, technology, and much more – and are critical to deliver the important governance resources special districts need to provide robust services in their communities.