Recently, an expert group of practitioners, funders, researchers and evaluators gathered to create a "map" to outline the many different options available to evaluate community development work. These options include assessing program performance or organization effectiveness, as well as individual, family and community impact.
Community based organizations, funders, and intermediary organizations working in the community development field have a shared interest in building stronger organizations and stronger communities. Through evaluation these organizations can learn how their programs and activities contribute to the achievement of these goals, and how to improve their effectiveness and the well-being of their communities.
The categories of capacity assessment, performance measurement, and outcome evaluation attempt to distinguish evaluations that focus on internal organizational abilities (capacity assessment) from those that are directed toward measuring the organization’s levels of activity (performance measurement) or the consequences of those activities for people and communities (outcome evaluation). In practice, however, these conceptual distinctions may be less clear and there has been a similar lack of clarity in connecting particular evaluation tools to these categories of community development evaluation.
In June 2003, more than 250 participants in a NeighborWorks® Training Institute symposium, Measuring What Matters: How Do Organizations Demonstrate the Difference they are Making in Communities? spent a day discussing ways of measuring the results of an organization’s community development work. The discussion raised and began to answer questions about the differences among the many tools and approaches to community development evaluation. At the end of the day, participants asked for a “map” that would clarify what is involved in capacity assessment, performance measurement, and outcome evaluation, and a guide that would help practitioners, funders, and intermediaries select tools and measures best suited to their evaluation needs.
NeighborWorks® America agreed to be the convener of a process to develop such a map and to do so through participation from diverse constituencies in the community development and related evaluation fields. In March 2006, NeighborWorks America brought together funders, practitioners, evaluators, researchers and other leaders in the community development field with interest and expertise in outcome evaluation, performance measurement, capacity assessment, community indicators, and related data collection and analysis activities. Participants at this event, which was facilitated by The Grove Consultants International, leading practitioners of visual illustration or “storymapping” of complex processes, began to sort out and map the local and national initiatives, approaches and tools for qualitative and quantitative evaluation and research in the field of community development. The concepts and images in the draft Community Development Evaluation Storymap and Legend presented here emerged from the discussion at this formative meeting. By integrating visual images and narrative explanation, the Storymap and accompanying decision matrices and legend are designed to help organizations in the community development field gain a broad understanding of the primary types of evaluation relevant to their work and more easily select tools and approaches that meet their evaluation needs.
Click on the links above for more information.
