Case Studies

Resources listed in this section provide stories of efforts to evaluate organizing work that illuminate key approaches and challenges that foundations and nonprofits may also be facing.

An Independent Governance Assessment of ACORN: The Path to Meaningful Reform
Scott Harshbarger and Amy Craft
Summary:  This memo provides an overview of the organizational structure of ACORN as it pertains to the organization’s ethics, effectiveness and sustainability.

Assessing Community: An Evaluation of the Ford Foundation's Community Organizing Initiative, Volume II
Marilyn Gitell, Barbara Ferman, and Charles Price
Summary:  This resource documents the impact of a Ford Foundation program to increase the capacity and support of community organizing in five regions over a five-year period, and includes the progress indicators and survey instruments used as part of the evaluation.

Building Powerful Community Organizations: A Personal Guide to Creating Groups that Can Solve Problems and Change the World
Michael Jacoby Brown
Summary:  This resource includes a checklist for evaluating a community organizing action as well as describes one person's experience working with community organizing groups to evaluate their work.

Center for Participatory Change Publications
Center for Participatory Change
Summary:  This website provides links to several evaluations of the Center for Participatory Change and its grassroots partners, as well as other materials on community organizing.

Check Your Success: A Guide to Developing Indicators for Community Based Environmental Projects
Department of Urban Affairs & Planning, Virginia Tech, in conjunction with the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency
Summary:  This resource sets out reasons why groups should evaluate their community work, provides tools for evaluating community involvement, and provides case studies of organizations doing community-based environmental work.

Community Organizing and Community Building for Health
Meredith Minkler, ed.
Summary:  This resource discusses the importance of evaluating community organizing, outlines the concept of "empowerment evaluation" as a recommended model, and includes a case study that documents the application of the methodology.

The Community Organizing Tool Box
Neighborhood Funders Group
Summary: This resource addresses the need for organizing evaluation, how different components of organizing fit into evaluation, and provides examples of evaluations that foundations have conducted of community organizing work.

The Community Tool Box
Work Group for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas
Summary:  This resource identifies the interests that various stakeholders may have in evaluating community initiatives, provides step-by-step guides for conducting evaluations, and includes case studies to illustrate the concepts discussed.

Evaluation of NPI’s Community Organizing Support Program for the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland
Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs
Summary:  This resource gives an account of the author’s evaluation of the effectiveness of a program designed to develop community organizing sensitivity and capacity in Cleveland’s community development corporations.

Evaluating Outcomes and Impacts: A Scan of 55 Leadership Development Programs
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Summary:  This resource documents a funder-sponsored initiative to evaluate leadership development in change-oriented programs and includes appendices that list questions and indicators used to evaluate leadership development.

Evaluation Study of Institution-Based Organizing
Jeannie Appleman
Summary:  This study documents a funder-sponsored evaluation of community organizing groups.

Faith and Public Life: Faith-Based Community Organizing and Development of Congregations: A Report of the Findings of a Study Conducted by Interfaith Funders and the University of New Mexico
Mary Ann Ford Flaherty and Richard L. Wood
Summary:  This resource provides a case study of the impact of congregation-based organizing on the sponsoring organization.

Making Connections: Community Organizing, Empowerment Planning, and Participatory Research in Participatory Evaluation
Randy Stoecker
Summary:  This resource lays out the core principles of participatory evaluation, argues for its importance as an evaluation model for community organizing, and includes an illustrative  case study.

Measuring the Impacts of Advocacy and Community Organizing: Application of a Methodology and Initial Findings
Lisa Ranghelli
Summary:  This resource gives the theoretical background and practical application of an extensive effort on the part of a group of funders to develop an analytic tool for evaluating the impact of community organizing and advocacy work.

The Monetary Impact of ACORN Campaigns: A Ten Year Retrospective, 1995-2004
Lisa Ranghelli
Summary:  This resource documents the impact of ACORN's work over 10 years by measuring the monetary benefits that resulted from its organizing campaigns.

Needmor Fund Program Assessment
The Needmor Fund
Summary:  This resource documents a funder's evaluation of its grantees as well as an evaluation of the funder's role in raising the profile of organizing work.

Organized Communities, Organized Schools: A Preview of Research Findings
Kavitha Mediratta, et al. 
Summary:  This resource documents a multi-year effort to measure the impact of community organizing for education reform.

Organizing Urban America: Secular and Faith-based Progressive Movements
Heidi Swarts 
Summary:  This book highlights and juxtaposes the approach and impact of two different types of organizing networks (neighborhood-based and church-based) in St. Louis, Missouri and San Jose, California.

People Making Public Policy in California: The PICO California Project
Paul Speer
Summary:  This resource is an academic evaluation of an effort to unify the work of 10 congregation-based organizing groups.

Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities: Impacts of Advocacy, Organizing, and Civic Engagement in Minnesota, New Mexico, and North Carolina
Julia Craig, Gita Gulati-Partee, and Lisa Ranghelli
Summary:  This resource consists of a series of reports evaluating the impact of community organizing in Minnesota, New Mexico, and North Carolina.  The methodology behind the reports are described in more depth in another RECO resource, Measuring the Impacts of Advocacy and Community Organizing.

Strong Neighborhoods, Strong Schools: Case Studies
Eva Gold, Elaine Simon, Chris Brown, Suzanne Blanc, and Aida Nevarez-LaTorre
Summary:  These resources consist of case studies documenting the application of the evaluation framework described in the companion RECO resource, Strong Neighborhoods, Strong Schools: Successful Community Organizing for School Reform, to three different education organizing projects:  (a) Alliance Organizing Project, (b) Oakland Community Organizations, and (c) Logan Square Neighborhood Association.

Strong Neighborhoods, Strong Schools: Successful Community Organizing for School Reform
Eva Gold and Elaine Simon with Chris Brown
Summary:  This resource provides concrete case examples to demonstrate the application of evaluation indicators of education organizing efforts.

Tools for Radical Democracy: How to Organize for Power in Your Community
Joan Mineri and Paul Getsos
Summary:  This resource discusses the importance of evaluating community organzing work, provides tools for doing so, and includes interviews and case examples highlighting organizations' experiences with evaluation. 

Voter Engagement Evaluation Project
Funders' Committee for Civic Participation and Proteus Fund
Summary:  This resource documents the evaluation of voter registration efforts.