For decades, the community development field has pursued understanding how community-based organizations contribute to neighborhood change. This critical understanding has been a north star as the field has gained a deeper understanding of the importance of measuring broader community change as well as housing production.
NeighborWorks and Success Measures have been partnering for over 10 years to work with NeighborWorks network organizations to help measure this impact. Network organizations are supported by Success Measures through remote technical assistance. Success Measures helps these organizations execute neighborhood observations and surveys, and gather secondary and administrative information about their community through PolicyMap, an online data and mapping tool that aggregates publicly-available and proprietary data to better understand the community. Participating organizations have used these evaluation and learning efforts to unearth critical information that they use to engage with communities, deepen partnerships, and tell their stories of change.
NeighborWorks and Success Measures recently kicked off a fifth round of the Community Impact Project (CIM) with 24 NeighborWorks organizations across the nation. Some organizations have been tracking community change for over a decade. We are honored to have the opportunity to continue to support NeighborWorks and its network members to build their capacity to tell their stories of change and to contribute alongside NeighborWorks to building the community development and housing fields’ learning about the value of place-based investment and evaluation.
This support from Success Measures—to document organizations’ community efforts and grow their capacity for evaluation and learning, understand how their actions spark change that is community-led, and share findings back with residents and community partners—is especially important as organizations continue to navigate a reduced funding landscape and fewer resources.
Read about the origin of CIM in our Celebrating 20 years of Success Measures at NeighborWorks America piece or about the end of the fourth CIM round in our Winter 2025 Newsletter.
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