How successful have Community Foundations
been? How did they measure their success? These resources
explain how other people have evaluated themselves, and how
you can use these tools yourself. Just click to read!
Toronto Vital Signs (Canada)
The Toronto Community Foundation developed Vital
Signs, a set of 27 indicators, to help to determine how
well the Toronto
community is working. This is one of the few evaluation
tools we’ve found that uses hard, quantifiable data
to determine the strength of a community. These 27 indicators
are valuable models for designing your own evaluation system,
either in full or in part. This is a great, living example
of an ongoing evaluation process.
 You
can read the expanded research document on each individual
indicator by clicking on the Vital
Signs 2001 report in the left margin of the Toronto Vital
Signs page.
Social Capital in Boston (USA)
Dr. Robert Putnam, the Harvard professor who coined the term
“social capital,” prepared this survey
for The Boston Foundation and 39 other cities. The goal of
the survey was to establish a “baseline measure of community
involvement that can be used to track changes over time.”
It measured indicators such as citizens’ level of political
activism, involvement in arts or faith institutions, and volunteerism.
This is an excellent example of social research by a community
foundation.
Social Capital and “Our Millennium”
National Project (Canada)
The Caledon Institute developed this report
for Community Foundations of Canada. It describes the “Our
Millennium” initiative and then provides “Lessons
From the Ground,” a helpful explanation of the strengths
and weaknesses of the project.
Have we missed something? Know a great resource
we should include here? Email us at tamarack@tamarackcommunity.ca.
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