Resources on measuring outcomes in collaboration and community change

A reference report by Vibrant Communities Canada provides a resource for organisations engaged in community change and measuring outcomes.

Approaches to Measuring: Community Change Indicators (2010) by Liz Weaver, Paul Born and Denise L Whaley, reviews community change measurement tools and techniques used by a variety of organisations internationally and across Canada. The report consolidates research papers on approaches to measurement in four areas: less poverty in communities, more vibrant communities, more community engagement, and more collaboration in communities. (The individual reports are freely available on the Tamarack website.)

Intended as a living document, the consolidated report is intended to (1) provide a starting point for exploring different community change measurements and resources, and (2) develop further conversations about measurement tools and techniques in measuring community change efforts. It is not a comprehensive list of all the measurement tools available but provides a variety of different approaches which organisations can use to measure change.

The report does not specifically discuss family violence but it may be of interest to NGOs working in family violence given the focus on measuring outcomes and collaboration under Investing in Services for Outcomes.

The section "Approaches to Measuring More Vibrant Communities" considers community wellbeing indicators such as safety, social cohesion and inclusion. It provides an overview of different approaches governments and organisations have used to measure community wellbeing and identifies sets of significant reoccurring indicators.

The section "Approaches to Measuring More Collaboration in Communities" provides an overview of different approaches governments and organisations have used. It also discusses some of the significant challenges of measuring community collaboration. These include that:

• Most examples provided measure the impact of the collaborative effort from the perspective of the individuals involved but often don’t measure the overall impact on communities of multiple collaborative efforts

• Only two of the examples provided attempted to measure the impact or long-term effects of their collaboration

• Only two approaches were specifically multi-sector.

All sections include links for further reading.

Other resources about collective impact are available from Liz Weaver's New Zealand workshop series in September 2013 (scroll down to 'Collective Impact') and Liz Weaver's blog.

Community Research is hosting author Liz Weaver for a webinar, ‘Collective Impact – Getting to shared measurement’ on 18 February 2014 at 11am.