Community Development TIG Week: Being a Strategic Lifesaver: Helping Community Development Organizations Find the Right Metrics—and Not Drown in Data by Michael Shields

Date: Tuesday, July 29, 2025

I am Michael Shields, a Managing Associate with Community Science, a research and development firm that helps transform systems to be more responsive, enable supportive conditions, and strengthen communities’ capacity for change.

Like many evaluators, we often encounter well-meaning foundations, national intermediaries, and community organizations overwhelmed by the vast amount of housing, transportation, workforce, and economic data available to them. Many have launched thoughtful strategies around housing, economic development, or infrastructure to improve their communities, and they hope to find the perfect metrics that capture their impact. Yet, when tracking progress, they often become submerged in data or overly focused on compliantly reporting key performance indicators (KPIs), losing sight of their broader purpose.

Lesson Learned: From Strategy to Metrics—Not the Other Way Around

This is where evaluators play a critical role. Instead of beginning with, “What can we measure?”, we help organizations ask, “What are we trying to achieve—and what do we need to know to get there?”

At Community Science, we walk our community development partners through their theories of change and strategies to surface actionable goals and metrics. Together, we clarify what they hope to achieve in the short and long term, the actions they are taking, the partners they need, and the barriers they might face. We then identify aligned metrics and accessible data sources that reflect those milestones and help capture progress.

For example:

• A foundation may aim to improve housing affordability. We first help them map out their strategies around the development, preservation, conversion of affordable housing units, renter assistance, or community land trusts, for example. Then we help identify pertinent metrics to measure progress, such as the number of units permitted or occupied, the number of low-income families receiving assistance (short-term), years families reside in units, or changes in affordability for target populations (long-term).
• A community organization may launch a workforce development initiative. We help co-create short-term goals and metrics around capturing success or points for pivoting, like the number of training programs created or participants placed in sustainable jobs, as well as long-term system change successes, such as increases in labor force participation or integrated partnerships between training programs and regional employers.

In both cases, we help breakdown ambitious initiatives and strategies into measurable, meaningful steps.

Metrics as Guideposts, Not Destinations

Perhaps the most important contribution we make is helping partners view metrics as guideposts, not endpoints. At Community Science, we encourage seeing data as a means for learning and adaptation—not just compliance reporting. The goal is not perfect numbers; it is to use the numbers to reflect, learn, and make informed adjustments along the way.

In our strategy sessions, we encourage organizations to ask practical questions like:

• What can we realistically achieve in the next year? Six months? One month?
• How will we know we accomplished those things? What’s the difference we expect to see, feel or experience, or hear about?
• If we are not seeing the expected changes, why and what should we adjust?

This approach shifts the mindset from checking boxes to practicing continuous reflection and learning, using data to stay grounded in strategic goals as circumstances evolve.

Measuring What Matters Most

In a world overflowing with housing, economic, and demographic data, the evaluator’s job is to help organizations stay focused on their mission and strategies, not get distracted by every KPI or available dataset. By starting with strategy, clarifying what success looks like, and selecting metrics that illuminate short-term and long-term progress and impact, we can help our community development partners avoid drowning in data—and instead, chart a clear and meaningful course forward.

AEA is hosting CD TIG Week with our colleagues in the Community DevelopmentTopical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our CD TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.