History
Success Measures: Supporting Communities to Tell Their Stories for Change
Created in 1996 by a group of community development practitioners and funders who sought to understand change through community voice, Success Measures continues to grow and evolve. Success Measures has supported more than 1,000 local and national organizations, funders, and intermediary partners in all 50 states and Puerto Rico through comprehensive evaluation and strategic learning processes as well as technical assistance, measurement tools and supportive technology.
Our focus remains on supporting community-based organizations to tell and learn from their stories of change. Over the years, we broadened our work to include support for CDFIs, intermediaries and foundations to both share their own stories, and to develop the internal structures and practices for listening to those working directly with communities so that those community-centered stories of change are received as credible information for decision-making and learning.
Throughout this evolution, our longstanding commitment to transformative participatory and relationship-centered practices has elevated community voices for over twenty years, laying the foundation for enduring change in communities, organizations and philanthropy.
Success Measures Beginnings (1996 - 2003)
| 1996 | The Success Measures Project was launched by the Development Leadership Network (DLN) to demonstrate how to evaluate changes in communities from the residents’ perspectives.In partnership with funders including Annie E. Casey Foundation, F.B. Heron Foundation and Ford Foundation, 300 community development practitioners were engaged over three years in nine regional convenings to identify and name indicators of change in their communities. |
| 1999 |
Building on the regional convenings, a national Success Measures convening identified transformative participatory evaluation approaches, a set of 44 key indicators, and recommendations for documenting and learning from housing and community development initiatives. The Success Measures Guidebook was published to support grassroots practitioners in using these outcome measures and participatory approaches. The McAuley Institute, a housing and community intermediary active at the time, partnered with DLN to field test and disseminate the Success Measures approach. |
2000 |
Through a two-year field test with 50 organizations across the country, Success Measures developed measurement tools and evaluation capacity building processes. This effort showed that an easy-to-use technology system was needed to support organizations interested in using Success Measures approaches and tools. |
2002 |
With the support of the Fannie Mae Foundation, Ford Foundation, Heron Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation, Success Measures at the McAuley Institute developed the Success Measures Data System (SMDS), an efficient and streamlined platform for participatory evaluation. Previously developed data collection tools then became broadly available through the platform via Success Measures’ nonprofit social enterprise model. |
2003 |
Success Measures supported community-based organizations through individualized technical assistance to engage communities, plan and implement participatory outcome evaluation.In addition, they began the development of the first new set of indicators with community organizers in four states, supported by the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation. |
Building Community Development Capacity and Tools to Understand Change (2004 - 2017)
| 2004 |
NeighborWorks America acquired Success Measures to provide an organizational home for Success Measures to deliver evaluation capacity building technical assistance to the 250-member housing organizations that NeighborWorks serves as well as the broader housing and community development field and philanthropy. Success Measures offers training at the NeighborWorks Training Institute for nonprofits in housing and community development. |
| 2005 |
Success Measures began an evaluation training and technical assistance program to support nonprofits that are members of NeighborWorks America’s network to measure community level outcomes. Published a revised version of Success Measures Guidebook comprising over 60 data collection tools. |
| 2006 |
The Philadelphia-based Regional Foundation, then known as the Wells Fargo Regional Foundation, worked with Success Measures to build evaluation capacity building services to support their community-based grantees’ ability to measure resident quality of life and other outcomes of place-based investments. Over this 19-year partnership, Success Measures helped over 80 of their grantees demonstrate outcomes of neighborhood revitalization efforts and share their learning with key stakeholders and community residents. |
| 2007 | Habitat for Humanity began a 10-year partnership with Success Measures to support their affiliates to evaluate the outcomes of their neighborhood revitalization efforts across the nation. In the final three years, Success Measures trained their staff in outcome evaluation so that staff could support local affiliate organizations. |
| 2008 |
Success Measures led a participatory national effort to co-design a new set of Financial Capability Tools to assess the results to a range of financial coaching, asset building and housing counseling programs. With support from the Citi Foundation and the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, Success Measures developed, field tested and supported organizations to use shared outcome measures to track changes in attitudes and behavior related to financial capability. These measures for adults and youth are available through the Success Measures Data System or as free printable documents. |
| 2009 |
Success Measures served as the evaluation and learning partner for the Ford Foundation Metropolitan Opportunity Unit’s five-year, $200 million dollar effort to connect residents to jobs and opportunities in ten metropolitan regions across the country. This developmental evaluation focused on assessing how systems change related to affordable housing, economic opportunity and land use was occurring in these regions to better inform the foundation’s grantmaking strategies and demonstrate progress toward greater regional equity. The Success Measures evaluation team worked closely with the foundation’s program officers and a grantee advisory group in the metro areas to refine the Metropolitan Opportunity Unit’s theory of change, identify relevant measures, plan the evaluation process, examine data and conduct sensemaking sessions to guide strategy and investments. Read the case study Working toward Collaborative Learning: Evaluation of the Ford Foundation’s Metropolitan Opportunity Unit Strategy for more information. |
| 2010 |
Success Measures led the Financial Capability Demonstration Project for NeighborWorks America, funded by Citi Foundation. The project was designed to scale financial coaching services for low- and moderate- income individuals and evaluate how these services help coaching clients make progress in achieving their financial goals. Success Measures’ evaluation role in this 2.5-year national project included providing technical assistance and peer learning support to a cohort of 30 leading nonprofits to build their capacity to plan and implement an outcome evaluation tailored to financial coaching programs. This work was published in a national summary report. A 2013 convening of national nonprofits, policy makers, researchers and others spurred additional dialogue and partnerships toward nationally scaling financial coaching. Afterwards, Success Measures supported additional scaling through training and technical assistance for an additional 20 organizations interested in evaluating their financial capability programs. |
| 2012 |
The Success Measures Data System (SMDS) underwent major upgrades for version 2.0 to meet new technology standards and to increase analysis, reporting and multi-language capabilities. SMDS 2.0, an online repository, now offers more than 400 outcome-focused and culturally responsive data collection tools for the housing and community development field designed to help organizations manage survey and observation data. The Success Measures data collection tools can be used to measure a range of contextual, perceived and observable changes in individuals and communities and may be used off-the-shelf or customized for specific programs or audiences. Learn more about SMDS. |
| 2013 |
For NeighborWorks America, Success Measures initiated and leads the Community Impact Measurement (CIM) Project, one of the largest multi-site efforts to assess resident quality of life in community development practice. Success Measures has provided technical assistance and training for over 200 NeighborWorks organizations through four rounds of data collection and analysis in 3-year cycles to examine resident quality of life, community conditions and measures of social cohesion through a neighborhood survey and observations of community conditions. The effort supports organizations to make effective use of data locally to understand change over time in their communities and supports NeighborWorks America to look across the national cohort of participating communities. |
| 2014 |
Success Measures, with support from NeighborWorks, led a participatory, field-building national effort to develop the Health Outcome Measurement Tools. The tools support housing and community development organizations that wanted to document and better understand how their programs that address the social determinants of health impact the health of community residents and the health of their communities. Through a multi-disciplinary working group, this effort focused on practical ways for community-based organizations to assess health impacts of their work. This set of tools tailored for community-based organization use are downloadable for free. |
| 2016 |
Enterprise Community Partners and Success Measures partnered to conduct the Health Outcomes Demonstration Project, a 3-year national project. The teams supported 20 housing and community development organizations through grants, peer learning and evaluation technical assistance to measure the outcomes of their housing, community development and health equity efforts by piloting Success Measures health outcome measurement tools. The project was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson, Kresge and Hearst Foundations. The project’s final report can be accessed here. |
| 2017 |
As part of a multi-year Creative Community DevelopmentiInitiative, Success Measures partnered with NeighborWorks America’s Comprehensive Community Development unit and conducted a field scan and literature review of evaluation of creative placemaking and examined the role that NeighborWorks could play in this arena. The initiative contributed to the field by revising and field-testing key Success Measures data collection tools to include an arts and creative placemaking focus, and created and piloted, in partnership with a community-based artist, new tools using innovative arts methods to evaluate impacts on communities. This project was supported by the Kresge Foundation. Download the arts and culture tools and read about the project on our website. |
Building Philanthropic Capacity to Listen and Learn with Grantees and Communities (2019 - 2024)
| 2019 |
Success Measures and Verge Impact Partners led a multi-year developmental evaluation and facilitated a grantee community of practice for the Kresge Foundation’s Advancing Health Equity Through Housing Program. This interactive engagement included facilitating work sessions and national convenings for this funding program which supported 26 nonprofit organizations implementing a range of innovative solutions to integrating health and housing initiatives. The evaluation process supported the foundation’s learning about community-driven practices that connect the housing and health sectors and, in a follow-on phase, co-designed a set of communities of practice among the grantees for additional peer-directed learning and exploration. |
| 2021 |
Success Measures began a multi-year evaluation for the St. David’s Foundation Thriving Rural Communities team. Building on the ongoing work of Network Weavers, Success Measures supported local meetings in three rural counties with residents and grantees to identify community-centered health and well-being priorities and assisted the foundation with integrating them into their ongoing strategic planning processes. Local consultant Kia Burden and Success Measures co-led a series of community and grantee conversations to develop a theory of change for the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut. These conversations centered community and grantee voices to map the social justice eco-system. Using this map, the Foundation created a new set of grants to support priorities lifted up by grantees in the process. |
| 2022 |
The Research, Evaluation and Learning Unit of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation partnered with Success Measures to provide tailored evaluation technical assistance to more than 50 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Healthy Communities grantees. Over this 4-year effort, Success Measures is helping both national and community-based organizations solve their discrete evaluation challenges in their efforts to document and learn from their work to address the social determinants of health and health equity. These tailored services bring the unique combination of sector and evaluation expertise to organizations in accessible ways to meet their immediate needs. |
| 2022 | Success Measures co-designed a listening tour with community health leaders and the BUILD Health Challenge at the deBeaumont Foundation. The tour created an opportunity for BUILD alumni communities to reflect on previous iterations of BUILD to prepare for their fourth cohort, BUILD 4.0. BUILD staff incorporated learning into their strategic plan and the structure of BUILD 4.0. |
| 2023 | Success Measures conducted a mixed-method multi-year evaluation of the National Collaboration for Health Equity’s Culture of Health Leadership Institute for Racial Healing to help leaders and program staff understand the impact of a healing practice. |
| 2024 | Partner Verge Impact Partners and Success Measures began supporting Interact for Health to co-design a developmental evaluation with grantees to better understand the community power ecosystem through their health work in Ohio. |
While Success Measures continues to grow and incorporate new methodologies and approaches to evaluation, the 20-year anniversary in 2024 provided an opportunity for the team to reflect on Success Measures’ roots in transformative participatory evaluation and to draw those values and practices forward explicitly.
Over the past two decades, we’ve developed deep relationships with our partners. We’ve supported generative work with national funders and intermediaries; helped community-based organizations build capacity to measure and understand community-level change and developed enduring field-building outcome measurement tools. As we’ve learned together with partners and communities, we’re pleased to have contributed to elevating community-focused ways of understanding change within the housing, community development and health fields.
As we look to the future, we will continue to ground our work in community voice, build relationships and work with our partners to meet the needs of communities.