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Measuring Community Success and Sustainability: An Interactive Workbook

Created by the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, located at Iowa State University, it describes a process to help communities learn how to measure the local or regional impacts of economic and community development processes that enhance rural community sustainability. The principal purpose is to help communities learn how to measure the concrete results of rural community development and conservation efforts. The entire process is anchored in research that determined the ways in which communities define success in their local development efforts. The measures that camefrom those communities were analyzed in terms of existing research on community and ecosystem sustainability.

The workbook provides guidance to communities, nonprofit organizations and agency personnel who want to get a better idea of the possible ways to gather information that details progress toward community-established outcomes.

The North Central Regional Center for Rural Development is one of four regional centers coordinating rural development research and education throughout the United States. It is supported by the land-grant universities of the North Central region, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and grants and contracts from private foundations.

Visit the workbook at http://www.ag.iastate.edu/centers/rdev/Community_Success/why.html

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