Committed leaders who know how to get things done at a local scale often serve as Community Champions. These individuals can use the steps as a roadmap to initiate a resilience-building process and keep it moving forward. Drawing on their detailed local knowledge and broad networks of different groups, champions can use the steps to set a project's scope, identify who needs to be involved, and decide what outcomes to pursue.

Individuals who are elected, appointed, or employed by a government entity can serve as a Government Champion. These individuals work for the people their offices represent, often to address sustainability or develop a climate action plan or a hazard mitigation plan; they can use the steps to lead a process to help protect people and assets from climate-related hazards.

Practitioners are individuals or groups who have expertise in climate and in risk management. They often work as consultants for a City or Council of Governments to help them document their climate-related hazards and produce a climate action plan. In contrast to champions who use the steps as a guide, practitioners may focus on specific tasks such as compiling data or writing reports. Many Community and Government Champions choose to hire a Climate Adaptation Practitioner to move their resilience planning forward.

People in most communities across the United States are aware of the extreme weather or climate-related hazards they could experience. If you're already aware of a hazard that could occur in your community, you'll make a list of the people, places, and services that could be damaged by that hazard. Later, you'll explore additional hazards that could affect those assets.

People often form communities around an asset they want to protect. For example, dozens of business owners might join a "Downtown Association" to promote and protect their shops. Outdoor recreation enthusiasts, wildlife conservationists, and sportsmen might join together to form a "Friends of the River" group. Asset-centered groups can further their common goals by exploring the weather and climate-related hazards that could impact the asset they care about.

In order to be eligible for federal and state programs, municipalities, counties, and states are required to prepare and submit regular updates to official planning documents such as Hazard Mitigation Plans. Leveraging community engagements required for these updates to add climate considerations to planning documents is an efficient way to move plans forward and integrate climate resilience into future plans.