Tools and Methodologies
Resources listed in this section provide specific processes
that can help organizations implement evaluation of community organizing.
Analyzing and Evaluating Organizing Strategies
University of Massachusetts Boston Labor Resource Center
Summary: This resource is a course assignment that guides students through a series of evaluative questions for assessing the effectiveness of an organizing campaign on multiple levels.
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.
CCBI Community Organizing Assessment Tool
Chicago Community Organizing Capacity Building Initiative
Summary: This tool provides guidelines for organizations to assess their community organizing capacity.
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 Action Pack
The Marin Institute
Summary: This resource provides a series of questions for the evaluation of community organizing campaigns.
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.
Evaluating the Effects of Organizing (Draft)
Lee Winkelman
Summary: This resource includes evaluation questions for five key areas of community organizing capacity.
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 Resource Center
Innovation Network
Summary: This resource enables users to build a variety of evaluation tools for their programs and organizations.
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.
Leadership Development Ladder
Maine People’s Alliance
Summary: This strategic plan provides detailed indicators for leadership development within community organizing work.
Level Best: How Small and Grassroots Nonprofits Can Tackle Evaluation and Talk Results
Marcia Festen and Marianne Philbin
Summary: This resource provides a variety of concrete tools to guide grassroots organizations through an evaluation process from start to finish.
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.
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.
State Visits to Affiliates - Leadership and Civic Engagement Questions
Northeast Action
Summary: This resource provides a list of questions used to evaluate leadership development and civic engagement.
Strong Neighborhoods, Strong Schools: Successful Community Organizing for School Reform
Eva Gold and Elaine Simon with Chris Brown
Summary: This resource provides a set of indicator areas for conducting evaluations of community organizing efforts for education reform, discusses their interrelationship, and provides case examples that illustrate how to apply the various indicators.
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.
