Mayur Patel, Director of Strategic Assessment and Assistant to the President

Evaluating Community Info Projects.pdf (PDF)

Community information projects share a desire to inform and/or engage their communities. Most of these news and media projects take advantage of online, digital forms of communication (e.g., websites, Facebook groups or wikis), which in some cases is also integrate with offline approaches to sharing information and connecting people. The universe of community information projects includes a wide range of activities, but many focus on one or a few of the following:

News: Strengthening credible professional news sources.

Voice: Providing places where residents (e.g., youth, educators, the community at large) can share news and information with their communities.

Capacity: Building the capacity of individuals and/or organizations to address information needs and use digital tools.

Awareness: Creating awareness campaigns about community issues.

Action: Providing platforms for civic engagement and action.

In developing your community information project – whether to give voice to underserved communities or supporting an ongoing effort to deliver timely, reliable news and reporting – you may be asking yourself:

• How do I know which outcomes to evaluate? • What can I learn from analyzing website or social media data? • How do I make sense of the vast amount of online information that’s available? • What is needed to answer the question: “Are we having an impact?” • How can I use evaluation to strengthen our project and communicate its value to others?

This guide provides insight into these questions and others.