Evaluating Community Collaborations

Book excerpt: Collaborations, which bring organizations together in a community to implement or improve an innovative program or change a policy or procedure, have become a central strategy for promoting community change. Funders require them; nonprofits see them as useful solutions to their problems of declining resources and increasing complexity (including multicultural issues); and communities demand them as evidence that key stakeholders are coming together to address problems of mutual concern. Moreover, no matter how powerful the concept, the implementation of community collaborations can usually be improved. The evaluation of collaborations can provide evidence of outcome and impact, and can help improve the process by which the collaboration operates. This book was developed by the nonprofit Human Interaction Research Institute,with funding support from the Federal Center for Mental Health Services, in connection with a series of evaluations of mental health, youth violence prevention and arts grant-making programs (supported by both the Federal government and foundations)óall of which involved collaborations as a central mechanism. It is the first comprehensive treatment of theoretical, research, and practice issues concerning the evaluation of collaborations, and includes an extensive set of forms that can be adapted for this purpose. Chapter authors are leaders in both evaluation and community collaboration work.