Planning for viable rural communities must seek elements inherent in a well-kept American home: lights, water, telephone, employment of the household head, children in school, access to transportation, sufficient food, clothing, health care, recreation, etc. If a community falls short in these necessities, the "needs gap" is where effective service delivery systems operate. In Alabama the Tuskegee Institute cooperates with philanthropic organizations and federal, state, and local governments in developing a wide variety of programs. A grant by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation established the Human Resources Development Center which was designed to coordinate all outreach programs to address the needs of rural people in the 12 Black Belt counties of Alabama. The Mott Foundation aids community education; the Ford Foundation provides management training to certain agriculture cooperatives. Others involved in the Institute's work include the Rockefeller, W.T. Morris, Ushkow and Twenty-First Century Foundations as well as such organizations as the Heifer Project International, Lutheran Church, and Control Data Corporation. Federally supported social, education, and economic programs are also carried out; state and local governments lend what assistance they can. To truly understand rural conditions, a staff of Institute people go into the rural areas, talk to the needy people, discern the actual problems, and determine what is being done or can be done to provide services. (DS)