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Success Measures at NeighborWorks America

Success Measures, a social enterprise at NeighborWorks America is an innovative participatory outcome evaluation approach that engages community stakeholders in the evaluation process and equips them with the tools they need to document outcomes, measure impact and inform change.

Success Measures provides a range of outcome-focused evaluation services and tools for community development organizations and their funding and intermediary partners. Designed by practitioners, Success Measures has been tested and refined over the past decade with the aim of helping community-based organizations, and their supporters, gauge the impact of their work in systematic, credible and very practical ways.

Our unique method includes training, technical assistance and a user-friendly web-based data system — the Success Measures Data System (SMDS) — that is currently comprised of over 80 common outcome indicators and 240 distinct data collection tools.

Since its launching in mid-2005, SMDS has been used by over 320 community development nonprofits and more than 25 funders and intermediaries to create and measure both short-term milestones and broader, long-term impacts. Among these, more than 95 NeighborWorks organizations have participated in the Success Measures program.

Community-based organizations use the Success Measures process to build their evaluation capacity and more effectively use data for program design, improved management, planning and advocacy.

Funders make use of Success Measures to develop evaluation frameworks for their funding portfolios that allow them to aggregate primary and secondary level data on common metrics collected by grantees to better understand, and demonstrate, the impact of a variety of grantmaking programs.
Stakeholders in the community development arena are using Success Measures to share data and learnings about how transformational change takes place, thus advancing an array of revitalization efforts in urban and rural communities throughout the country.

Success Measures is accessible and adaptable, responding to the latest trends and issues in the field through development of new outcomes indicators/data collection tool sets and state-of-the-art software features. Over the last year, our organizational partners have asked us to devise new tools to measure the short, mid- and long-term benefits of financial education, asset building, and asset preservation programs within the context of community development activities.

Other indicator projects currently underway include one set focused on intermediaries interested in documenting the value of their training, technical assistance, financing and advocacy programs, and another on affordable green building initiatives. And, we have just recently introduced a consultant certification program to grow the pool of qualified professionals who can assist organizations conducting Success Measures evaluations.