Abuse of alcohol and other drugs causes a variety of problems in a community. Accordingly, this is a manual for use by groups of citizens working to build a broadly based community alcohol and drug abuse prevention program. It includes both a systematic framework which a coalition can apply to its community, and a detailed case study of one community group's success with an indicator data approach to assessing the community effects of drug and alcohol abuse. Part 1 asserts the need to assemble a community profile, and to clearly articulate the purpose for the data gathering activity. Part 2 presents the steps in assembling a package of community indicators, each accompanied by an illustration from the Regional Drug Initiative in Portland, Oregon. The steps are as follows: (1) brainstorming a list of possible indicators; (2) rounding out the field to fill in additional possibilities according to a table of indicator categories; (3) finding available data; (4) screening indicators according to availability; (5) looking for regional and national comparisons; (6) reconsidering the list; (7) identifying the best indicators; and (8) choosing the best approximations. Finally, part 3 suggests guidelines for using and disseminating the resulting community indicators. A list of further reading about community coalitions in alcohol and drug abuse prevention is appended, along with an illustrative example of disaggregating profile data. (TE)