A considerable amount of research has focused on effective ways in which researchers can act to help the community to develop. However, less attention has been paid to the interaction of community social capital with collective action in bringing about the success of economic development projects. This paper seeks the answer to these questions: (1) What role does social capital play in community collective action and economic development projects? (2) What is the relation between community collective action and a community economic development project? This paper seeks to construct the paths from community social capital to community collective action to successful community economic development projects. The data used in this paper are from a USDA-funded national community survey conducted in 1994 and early 1995. The survey includes 494 randomly selected places/communities in non-metropolitan areas of the U.S. The officials¹ of these communities were asked to fill out a questionnaire about their communities' economic development projects. Quantitative methodologies, including factor analysis, reliability analysis, linear regression, and logistic regression were used to construct and estimate relevant models.