Division II athletics administrators looking for simple solutions for community connections have a new resource from a familiar friend.

Rich Luker’s new book called “Simple Community” and its accompanying Web site will appeal to a much wider audience than just Division II colleges and universities, but Luker’s messages will resonate particularly with Division II members who have worked hard over the past two years to embrace community engagement as an anchor of their institutional identity.

Luker, who has consulted Division II about its community-engagement effort and been a frequent speaker at Convention sessions and governance meetings, lays out a plan for “simple community” that offers college sports as a conduit to achieve what America seems to have lost as its economy has shifted over time. Luker asserts that the national move to a service-based economy has isolated people from a sense of community.

“This is about something we know inside is a part of American culture that is missing and we long for it,” Luker said. “If that notion breaks through, then you can talk about how to put it together. But there also has to be an explanation of what’s going on in American business and why it’s needed there.”

The book is cleverly designed as a “flip book.” One side is called “Living Simple Community,” and the other is “Building Simple Community.” The former gives readers a sense of what community is and how it has been shaped or affected over time. The latter urges businesses to rethink community outreach, or as Luker says, “Stop thinking about people as consumers and think about them as people. Stop delivering messages and start telling stories, not brand stories but people stories.”

College sports, which often serves as the “front porch” of the university at which the community gathers, is Luker’s ideal link between the people who want to experience community and the companies who have the resources to provide it. Working with Division II actually helped spur Luker onto the “Simple Community” approach.

“The work we did for Division II community engagement is where all the lights came on with me,” he said. “What you have are 300 schools, 22 conferences – and they all think similarly about what they do.”

Luker said he assumed that the challenging part of the community-engagement strategy would be to develop a structure that linked schools with corporations. “But that didn’t end up as a challenge because schools showed a willingness to just do it on their own,” he said.

Thus, Division II is a ready-made audience for Simple Community, a concept Luker breaks down into six components:

• People
• Time
• Place
• Resources
• Stories
• Traditions

College sports – particularly at community-based Division II institutions – provide the place. And as businesses become more adept at identifying with people at the local level (what Luker calls “grass-roots marketing”) rather than messaging on a national scale, they will provide the resources – simply because there are long-term financial benefits for them to do so. People and time are givens – and stories and traditions will result from these gatherings.

“The most immediately promising component of building Simple Community is sharing ideas that already have worked,” Luker says in the “Building Simple Community” section of the book. “The NCAA already has this capability on the DII community Web site. … (Those ideas) provide insight on the keys to the success and advice for future programs. (As those programs mature), you will see more schools try the ideas that work – reaching out to their communities. Each time it will get better, as second, third and fourth schools try existing ideas and add suggestions for modifications and improvements.”

Division II readers of Luker’s “Simple Community” won’t struggle to understand the primary points since so many presidents, administrators and coaches have been living and building Simple Community already. But the book will validate and reinforce the reasons for the effort – it’s a simple read with a rewarding outcome.

And at the end of it, Luker’s advice is simple to execute: “Just go out and play!”

For more information about Simple Community or to order online, click here. Enter “NCAA” in the “Promo Code” and a dollar will be donated to Make-a-Wish Foundation on behalf of Division II student-athletes. A 10 percent discount is available on purchases of five to nine copies and 15 percent on purchases of 10 or more.