Resources for Evaluating Community Organizing

CHECK OUT THESE RECENTLY ADDED RESOURCES:

» An Independent Governance Assessment of ACORN: The Path to Meaningful Reform » Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities: Impacts of Advocacy, Organizing, and Civic Engagement in Minnesota, New Mexico, and North Carolina (New:  Minnesota and North Carolina) » Analyzing and Evaluating Organizing Strategies » Measuring the Impacts of Advocacy and Community Organizing: Application of a Methodology and Initial Findings » Evaluation of NPI’s Community Organizing Support Program for the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland

As Alliance for Justice has developed tools and strategies for evaluating advocacy work, we have often been asked for more specific information about evaluating community organizing.  We have found that the range of organizing styles, approaches, and philosophies in use can make it challenging to formulate a consistent mechanism for evaluating the organizing process and its outcomes.  This lack of consistent evaluation often contributes to a misunderstanding or devaluing of organizing work by funders, policy makers, and community-based organizations.

In response to these requests and to help raise the profile of community organizing as a critically important change strategy, we have developed Resources for Evaluating Community Organizing (RECO).  RECO includes detailed summaries of each resource so users can find the resources that are most useful for their evaluation needs.

Most of the resources we have included—case studies, tools and methodologies, and theoretical approaches to evaluation—are broadly available to the public, either through free downloads from the organization's website, or through an e-mail request.  We have also included books and other publications which are only available for purchase.  We have made a note of these resources when applicable as well as included information on where hard-to-find resources can be located.

To create RECO we scanned a large field of resources and included those we found to be most useful.  Our goal in compiling this listing of resources was not to rate or rank them, and, while we have included dozens of references there are undoubtedly some that we have missed and more that will be available in the future.  We invite you to share stories of how you have used specific resources and offer your feedback on their usefulness.  We also ask you to contribute names and descriptions of additional resources and to make comments on their usefulness so that we can share that information through future editions of RECO.  Please use the links provided under "User Comments/Additions" to do so.