Effective Community Indicators

Lia Gudaitis shares some of her work in Tools for Action: Analysing the Effectiveness of Community Indicators Projects in Realising Community Empowerment. In her blog, she talks about the work she did with The Social Planning and Research Council of British Columbia (SPARC BC) in Canada.

(Side note: Scott Graham from SPARC BC presented on "Using Community Indicators to Mobilize Action" at the 2007 Community Indicators Consortium conference -- he represented the Council well.)

Lia suggests that, in her research, "outcomes of indicator projects varied as much as the indicator projects themselves. " That poses both an opportunity and a challenge to community indicators efforts -- how do you build in measures of your own effectiveness in galvanizing community change?

Some folks have, as evidenced by the CIC Innovation Awards Winners, communities whose commitment to community change through indicators have led to exciting (and measurable) results. For other communities, their indicators projects are too new see results yet.

But the opportunity/challenge exists to design your indicators effort so that it is accessible to the community, empowers people to make change, and measures what change is being made. For those who do so, congratulations -- and share your stories, please.