The American Association of Special Districts was established in August 2024 to fulfill the long-standing need for a strong association to navigate and address broad, underlying issues impacting the nation’s 35,000+ special districts.
This article introduces three core concepts of service to America’s special districts, why each are part of AASD’s foundation, and how they will each work toward fulfilling AASD’s mission to unite, strengthen, and advance special districts.
Importantly, we can only accomplish this mission together. Please consider giving AASD a test run and becoming a founding member for our 2025 program year to support this important cause.
Learn more about AASD Membership | Submit interest to be an AASD Founding Member
Three Concepts to Address Overarching District Needs
AASD’s has identified three primary elements to address the underlying issues impacting special districts’ understanding and recognition of services across the country – all with roots at the state levels:
- Coalition Building. Bringing special districts, of all types, together in their states over common needs and building their advocacy capacities.
- Professional Service. Closing the gaps between professional providers (compliance needs, legal, finance, etc.) and special districts in need of services, governance best practices/education, and assistance.
- Understanding through Research. Addressing broken datasets that impact understanding of special districts’ services among the general public, elected legislators, and regulatory agencies – and posing solutions to fix them.
Bringing Special Districts Together, Building Advocacy Capacity
The first of AASD’s core concepts is to network interested and willing special district stakeholders and leaders with one another across states – especially in the 30 (or so) states that have potential for viable, sustainable “umbrella” special districts associations.
Our goal is to build special districts’ capacities to effectively engage with their local, state, and federal legislators.
AASD is rooted in our founders’ experience working with special district leaders and stakeholders across the nation – especially in those states without an association bringing all districts together. From Arizona to Missouri to Louisiana, and regardless of fire, park, or library services – feedback on districts’ needs and concerns are similar.
Districts have commonly expressed their feeling of “being on an island.” District leaders feel like their voices are not being heard (or even spoken) in their state capitols. AASD believes these special districts leaders actually have the capability to be the largest local government advocacy force in their states, if carefully organized.
Our cofounders have witnessed, through the coordination of several state and regional “Summits,” special district leaders engaging in a group setting, for the first time, and discovering there are other special districts similar to them (and they are actually not on an island.) Introductory conversations among stakeholders are powerful, and we recognize its power to inspire action. AASD’s cofounding leaders are already putting this principle into practice – recently establishing in Arizona the ninth state umbrella organization for special districts in the country and are working toward establishing these organizations in other states.
AASD will invest resources in, as well as aid with development of, special districts forums/coalitions/alliances/associations at the regional and state levels to unite and advance all types of special districts.
Interested in joining as a trial/Founding AASD Member? Click here to submit your interest.
Bringing the AASD Professional Network to Special Districts
The second of AASD’s three concepts the establishment of a respected, trusted network of professional goods providers, service providers, and educational/compliance aids for local governments, geared toward special districts.
Through engaging coalitions of special districts, our cofounders have frequently received requests for/referrals to professional service providers – usually after a run of bad luck, repeated denials for service, and having little-to-no network of professionals to supplement their districts’ limited resources.
One quote summing up why we are establishing the Professional Network for special districts:
“I have worked for [the district] for 20 years, and I’ve never had the opportunity to attend a meeting like this and ask questions on things like the Sunshine Law.”
– District Official following the Ozarks Special Districts Summit (July 31, 2024)
Together, we are going to make sure statements like this are a thing of the past.
AASD seeks to foster an environment for professionals to deliver educational and governance needs and to open the Business-to-Government pipeline to more special districts.
Our solution is the AASD Professional Network. The intent of the Professional Network is to be the trusted platform supplying common services that special districts need to perform their duties, do it efficiently, in compliance, and do it well – to best serve their communities.
The AASD Professional Network fuels programming at regional summits, workshops, and webinars. Offering regional summits and virtual, interactive engagements with our Professional Network experts delivers the synergy special districts have long needed in many states.
This concept advances AASD’s mission to strengthen special districts through delivery of governance resources, professional development, and other general compliance/educational needs many districts face. Providing these resources to special districts enhances their public community services and mitigates liability issues through education.
Interested in joining as a trial/Founding Member of the AASD Professional Network? Click here to submit your interest as an Associate Professional Member.
Advancing Understanding of the America’s Special District though Data & Research
AASD’s third and final concept is to tell the story of America’s special districts through data; but, there is much research to do to fix issues in existing datasets across states and at the federal level.
Our cofounders are not just advocates – they are also “Data Nerds” frustrated with the patchwork of reporting on special districts that exists in local government reports across states.
We are bringing together a group of research, academic, and data-driven stakeholders to dive into special districts data sets, identify pinch points, and start posing solutions and actions to remedy the major issues that exist in special districts data and understanding.
Through Research, Academic, and Data (RAD) Stakeholder contributions to AASD, we will be able to better tell districts’ story. Further, RAD Stakeholders aim to pose standards for states’ presentation of special districts’ reporting and establishing a reliable pipeline of information among the 50 states and the U.S. Census Bureau, which is responsible to conduct the Census of Government survey every five years.
The survey measures the health and public activities of more than 90,000 local governments across the country – including an estimated 39,000 non-education special purpose governments. Unfortunately, districts are underrepresented in the dataset, and many are misclassified as special districts in the datasets – creating flawed (but still official) data.
AASD will leverage research, recommendations, and other trends our RAD Stakeholders produce though AASD’s state and regional coalitions that are built over time. Likewise, AASD will support special district organizations and stakeholders to implement best practices in local government reporting/compliance needs across the states and improve the accuracy of the special districts data reflected in the semi-decennial Census of Government reports.
Interested in joining as a trial/Founding AASD Member diving into and researching the data-driven needs of special districts to better tell their story? Click here to submit your interest.
Interested in joining AASD as a Founding Member and supporting these concepts? Please try us out as we craft our programming for our inaugural member year beginning January 1, 2025. Click here to submit your interest to join AASD as Trial/Founding Member or email contact@americasdistricts.org. Visit our website for more at www.americasdistricts.org