Theoretical Approaches

Resources listed in this section provide perspectives on the need for evaluation
and its role in strengthening organizing and social change efforts.

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 Development Evaluation Storymap and Legend
NeighborWorks America
Summary:  This resource defines capacity, performance, and outcome assessments, provides conceptual frameworks as to why each is important, and provides a listing of over 20 tools that can be used for conducting these types of evaluations.

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.

Community Organizing Evaluation Project
The French American Charitable Trust
Summary:  This resource offers some observations on creating a shared framework for evaluation of community organizing work.

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.

Core Components of Community Organizing
Alliance for Justice
Summary:  This resource consists of a breakdown of seven core components of community organizing, along with a short discussion of the evaluation issues related to each component.

Funding Community Organizing:  Social Change through Civic Participation
GrantCraft, in partnership with The Linchpin Campaign - a project of the Center for Community Change
Summary:  This publication is intended to familiarize grantmakers with community organizing and includes specific sections devoted to the evaluation of organizing.

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.

Organizing for Power and Empowerment
Jacqueline Mondros and Scott Wilson
Summary:  This resource discusses the role of evaluation for four core components of organizing and identifies a theory of change based on the interaction between them.

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.

Participatory Evaluation Research and Community Organizing as Linked Social Change Work with Girls
Girl's Best Friend Foundation
Summary:  This essay provides a rationale for using a participatory evaluation process for community organizing work.

Research Methods for Community Change: A Project-Based Approach
Randy Stoecker
Summary:  This resource differentiates between process and outcome evaluations, discusses the role of internal participatory evaluations versus externally driven evaluations, and provides detailed steps of how organizations can set up a participatory evaluation process

Spotlight: Dave Beckwith, Executive Director of Needmor Fund
Alliance for Justice
Summary:  This resource identifies the importance of process-oriented evaluation in organizing to supplement impact evaluations, given the long-term nature of the organizing process.

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

Strengthening Social Change Through Organizational Learning and Evaluation
Andrew Mott
Summary:  This resource highlights the challenges to evaluating social change work, given its long-term focus, in the context of funder-driven external evaluations and internal self-evaluations.

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.