Community Boards often turn to professional assistance from the outside, when working on different phases of planning projects. Boards can find people to help them through a local organization directory or ask members to serve on a task force. Below are examples of the most common types of professional expertise Boards currently outsource.
- Professional members: Architects, urban planners and lawyers are an important asset to Community Boards’ voluntary membership base.
- Planning fellows: an organized program for urban planning students to support Community Boards’ planning activities, and contribute to data collection and mapping efforts. In 2011, the fellows worked in all Manhattan Community Boards (12 in total), and in several Brooklyn and Queens’ Community Boards (6 in total).
- Academic institutions: Community Boards collaborate with universities and research institutions in their community, to collect data for special projects.
- Consultants: for example, Bronx Community Board 7 hires professional consultants for short-term projects.