In a few weeks, I will participate in a conference hosted by the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation, the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions, and the Neighborhood Funders Group, entitled the Art & Science of Place-Based Evaluation. The conference builds off of a series of ongoing national conversations about the importance of “place” in philanthropic investments, including the Center on Philanthropy & Public Policy’s National Forum on Place-based Initiatives and the Aspen Institute’s Promising Practices Conference.
The conference promises to be an excellent peer-to-peer learning exchange among those really interested in investing in and evaluating complex, multi-level, cross-system place-based approaches in communities across the country. If you are interested in the conference, check out the details here. I am facilitating a session entitled “Connecting Community Change to Systems Change.” And the more I think about it, the harder it is for me to disentangle the two.
What is the role that evaluation has, can, and should play in linking community and systems change? And more pointedly: Can you have community change without changing systems? Probably not. If we intend to create and evaluate comprehensive, sustainable community change – and we want to do so by authentically empowering residents, building local capacity, and deepening locally owned solutions – how can we not change systems? How can we not consider community engagement and empowerment activities as part of our evaluation approach?
On the flip side, can you change systems without aiding community change? Absolutely, but the systems change – and perhaps even the results of the evaluation – may not result in the sustainable, equitable, comprehensive, and impactful change we desire. It depends on which “systems” you consider, and how you define “systems change.” If systems change is short-hand for institutional or agency policy or practice change, then yes, you can change those systems and still not make a proverbial dent in communities. On the other hand, if you define systems change as the complex interplay between individual, organizational, political, and power dynamics; and formal and informal relationships; then shifting systems will result in community change.
In my mind, community change requires fundamentally realigning the formal and informal systems at play for many decades in our neighborhoods, cities, and regions. These systems have produced outcomes such as acute disparities in educational and public health, cradle-to-prison pipelines, food deserts, and underinvestment, etc. So, if you want to change community outcomes, you must engage in systems change. And you have to be prepared to have your evaluation become part of the change you seek – systemic and at the community level. The power of asking a pointed question can create, contribute to, or deflect community power dynamics instantly.
Swing by the session to dig deeper into the discussion, and learn how we can possibly evaluate such complex efforts! If you can’t join, please comment below, and let us know what you think about connecting community and systems change efforts.
Meg Long is president of Equal Measure.