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The French American Charitable Trust started the Community Organizing Evaluation Project to make it easier for community organizing groups to measure impact and make important decisions about organization growth while also elevating the importance of community organizing in the funding community.
FACT hired consultants to engage in an evaluative process with three of its grantees, with the dual goal of evaluating the impact of the organizations' work and developing a shared framework for community organizing evaluation. The project resulted in the following conclusions:
§ Evaluation will be successful only if it is linked with organizational development, capacity building, and program planning.
§ Organizing work does not lend itself easily to the development of standardized evaluation methods; evaluations need to be tailored to the specific needs and culture of an organization.
§ Because the larger impact of organizing work can take years to manifest itself, evaluations should look at short-term process outcomes as well as longer-term impact.
§ When done in a trusting environment, evaluations can contribute to healthy organizational growth.
The web site allows users to download three documents that describe the project's goals, lessons learned, and the notes from the project. Ultimately, this resource gives an explanation of a foundation's emerging theory and understanding of the role of evaluation within the organizing arena. | 
