Although community development has traditionally been driven by the state, in most countries, it is often viewed as a policy initiative, establishing organizations to promote it and also as an administrative body. In contrast, when community development is viewed as a profession or a work method, the emphasis on the organization that promotes it is less important. More often, community development is viewed as a local initiative, not only neglecting the organization that promotes it, but also assuming that various professionals can implement community-based initiatives within existing systems. This, of course, fosters the emergence of conventional community development.
In contrast, when community capacity is emphasized, with the community as the primary driver and community cadres and volunteer teams serving as the service recipients, professional characteristics or new paradigms for community capacity building emerge. In other words, promoting community capacity building requires new tasks and professional methods, and implementing it through specialized organizations facilitates professional implementation.
In various helping professions, professionals can often provide services independently. However, just as community services are often related to public services, community empowerment services involve a multidimensional and multi-layered approach. A single professional often cannot provide comprehensive and appropriate services. Instead, a team of professionals within empowerment organizations is an appropriate combination for providing community empowerment services. Specifically, community empowerment centers, supported or established by the government or non-profit organizations, are currently the appropriate model for providing community empowerment. Within empowerment centers, the social workers and community empowerment practitioners employed can develop appropriate service modules with varying staffing levels, tailored to the scale and needs of the empowered population. In other words, the professional practice of community empowerment can be supported through the operations of empowerment organizations/institutions.
Community empowerment services have multidimensional and multi-layered characteristics, making them well-suited for delivery by a team of professionals within empowerment organizations. Within these multidimensional and multi-layered characteristics, each empowerment center further develops empowerment modules tailored to its local context, namely, empowerment units, empowerment solutions, empowerment methods, and empowerment actions. These service modules often require human resources and teams to develop and implement. While some empowerment centers have already developed and accumulated knowledge, each center still needs to continuously develop, accumulate, and apply and promote knowledge.
While countries (such as the Scottish Government and Taiwan) publish practical operation manuals to guide the implementation of each center, they expect the centers' practical operations to conform to professional knowledge and methods of community work. However, as community empowerment is a new approach to community development, its professional methods and work models still require development. Professional organizations can help to pass on, accumulate, and update practical skills.