|
The authors of this evaluation examined a program designed to increase the knowledge of and capacity to implement community organizing in several non-profit community development corporations. The capacity building program utilized a combination of staff training, mentoring/coaching, executive director dialogues, and funding to develop skills, sensitivity, and understanding of organizing within these organizations. The evaluation utilized both process measures (e.g. attendance at trainings) and outcome measures (e.g. organizations’ implementation of organizing activities) to evaluate the program’s success.
The evaluation relied heavily on interviews and surveys of training participants and executive directors to determine the impact of the capacity building activities. Additionally, the evaluators used measures such as increased organizational funding for organizing and increased number of reported organizing activities as measures that the capacity building efforts had an impact on participants.
The evaluation was focused on the overall program’s ability to increase organizational commitment to and capacity for organizing, and not on evaluating the individual organizations themselves, therefore including less on the actual outcomes of the organizing work. Measures of changes in the attendance rates of community members at organizational events is one of the few measures of the success of organizing activities that resulted from the capacity building program included.
The evaluation ends with recommendations to funders as to successful attributes of a capacity building program. | 
