Evaluating Community Change: A Framework for Grantmakers

The publication offers a framework for thinking about how to measure progress and results in place-based and 

community change initiatives. The framework, developed by GEO’s Embrace Complexity Community of Practice on the 

Evaluation of Place-Based Initiatives and Community Science, consolidates a variety of specific indicators related to: political, cultural, and economic context; baseline conditions; funders level of change; immediate program outcomes and potential to scale; capacity outcomes and changes to system conditions; systems-level changes; scale and sustainability; and population level impacts or outcomes. 

Because this framework was developed from the perspective of funders, it is funder-centric in that it presents funder interventions as a point of departure. In fact, many community change efforts begin with residents and nonprofit organizations.