Capacity Development Tools and Resources

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Water Board Basics - Keyes for Success: Annual Budget. Created by the Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC).
Priorities and the Budget Process. Produced by the City of San Diego, this document explains the city's budgeting goals, priorities and framework.

For more budgeting resources, see the Comprehensive Financial Guidebooks section below.

Setting Small Drinking Water System Rates for a Sustainable Future: This guide, created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is designed to help owners, operators, and managers understand the full costs of providing a safe and adequate supply of drinking water to their customers and how to set water rates that reflect those costs.
Principles of Water Rates, Fees, and Charges: This manual is available for purchase from the American Water Works Association (AWWA) has relevant information needed to evaluate and select water rate structures, fees, charges and pricing policies.

Water Board Basics - Keys for Success: Capital Improvements. Created by the Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC)

Asset Management: A Handbook for Small Water Systems: Developed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), One of the Simple Tools for Effective Performance (STEP) Guide Series. This guide is designed for owners and operators of small community water systems (CWS). Typical systems that may find this guide useful include: Small towns, Rural water districts, and Tribal systems.
Asset Management IQ: This tool helps one establish the baseline for asset management and then can measure improvement over time.
Asset Management Resources: EPA has compiled this list of asset management resources, including EPA guides for best practices and building an asset management team as well as partner resources.
Asset Management Tool AMKAN: This AM tool is easy to work with especially for small systems.
Integrated Green/Gray Asset Management Framework: This is completely online tool that helps systems walk through the asset management process if they only have gray assets, only green or a combination of green and gray.
Taking Stock of Your Water System: A Simple Asset Inventory for Very Small Drinking Water Systems: This guide from EPA helps very small water systems assess their condition by preparing a simple asset inventory and explains the benefits of doing so.

The Basics of Financial Management for Small-Community Utilities: This how-to guide from Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP) provides an overview of financial management for small community water utilities, from developing and balancing an expense budget to estimating and collecting revenue.
Financial Planning: A Guide for Water and Wastewater Systems: Created by the Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC), this guide presents a "business model" approach for managing systems, including various plans and tools that are useful for this process.
Rural and Small Systems Guidebook to Sustainable Utility Management: This guide from EPA and USDA provides information and tools to help rural and small water systems become more successful and resilient service providers. It includes an overview of the ten key management areas of effectively managed systems, a self-assessment to help identify a system's strengths and challenges, and strategies for improving outcomes in the ten key management areas.
Strategic Planning: A Handbook for Small Water Systems: This handbook from EPA provides an introduction to strategic planning and the seven steps used in the strategic planning process.
The Big Guide for Small Systems: A Resource for Board Members: This publication from RCAC is intended for both new and experienced members of the board of directors of a drinking water or wastewater utility or members of the highest governing board of a system.

Small Public Water Systems and Capacity Development: This EPA website is designed to help small water systems learn basic information regarding finances, management, infrastructure and operations.
EPA Water Technical Assistance: This web page offers technical assistance for water system infrastructure, including assistance applying for funding resources.
Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC): RCAC assists water treatment facilities with design and engineering of unit process improvements, as well as performing financial analyses and rate studies to support such improvements.
Environmental Finance Center Network (EFCN): EFCN is a university-based organization creating innovative solutions to the difficult how-to-pay issues of environmental protection and improvement. EFCN works with the public and private sectors to promote sustainable environmental solutions while bolstering efforts to manage costs.
Oregon Association of Water Utilities (OAWU): OAWU can conduct and provide water systems with rate studies and supporting documentation to review water system rates. Their rate studies have allowed many systems to obtain capital improvement funding from various private and government agencies.
US Water Alliance: The Alliance promotes sustainable and effective management of all water resources and strives to unite diverse interests for a secure future.