In 1995 a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded Kansas University’s development of a free online resource called the Community Tool Box.

Twenty years later, users worldwide rely on the Community Tool Box — it reports that more than 5.8 million visitors from 230 countries accessed the site in the past year — and the effort just received another Robert Wood Johnson grant of $250,000 to develop a long-range business plan to ensure its financial vitality in the future.

“There’s tear-jerking stories about people working on clean water in Kenya, to people working with girls in Pakistan for education, to people building rooftop gardens in New York City,” said Christina Holt, associate director for Community Tool Box Services. “People working on really important issues around the world have drawn upon the resources of the Community Tool Box along the way.”

KU Endowment announced the new grant on Monday.

The Community Tool Box provides open-source information to help communities in the United States and abroad improve health and development, according to the announcement. It now includes 7,000 pages of material in English and Spanish, with translations into Arabic and other languages underway.

Holt described it as a “soup to nuts” instruction manual for engaging in community organizing work.

Resources include topics such as how to write a grant, how to build leadership, how to engage in advocacy and how to conduct focus groups, Holt said. She said everyone from nonprofit groups to local governments or health departments use the Tool Box, and the U.S. Government’s Healthy People 2020 website is just one of the large-scale initiatives that provides links to the Community Tool Box on its website.

So far, Holt said, the Tool Box has been supported financially by private philanthropy and revenue from contracts to provide customized evaluations and services to groups, beyond the free information online.

In addition to bringing in additional revenue, the business plan enabled by the grant will aim to build a $3 million endowment to cover operating expenses into the future, Holt said. She said leaders are committed to keeping the Tool Box resources free.

Stephen Fawcett, KU’s Kansas Health Foundation Distinguished Professor of Applied Behavioral Science, founded the KU Work Group for Community Health and Development in 1975 and co-developed the Community Tool Box.

Fawcett is retiring this summer and will be replaced as co-director by Vincent Francisco, Holt said.

“The original vision of the Community Tool Box was to be a common well, a place where people working to build healthier and more just communities could find what they needed to be more effective and to be inspired by the work of others,” Fawcett said in the news release from KU Endowment. “We are so grateful to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for helping us assure that this capacity-building resource will continue to grow and serve those we will never meet in places we will never be.”