#56: Evaluation Tools for Your Grant Application

Clients often have a difficult time determining an easy, low cost, and meaningful way to evaluate the impact of their program. In fact, the evaluation process does, on occasion, devolve into mayhem! Here's a United Way website that youth development programs may find useful.

Toolfind - Youth Outcomes Measurement Tools Directory | United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley: "Toolfind is a free directory designed to help professionals in youth-serving programs find measurement tools for up to 11 youth outcome areas. Your time is valuable, so we have identified 46 tools to help you get started. All tools address one or more of the outcome areas, are tested, low-cost and have few restrictions. Tools included in this database address elementary, middle and/or high school students and youth, parent, staff and teacher respondents."

Photo cropped from a photo by Xiaming

# 55: SMART Maps for Grant Writers

OJJDP is the grant writer's new best friend when it comes to finding and mapping data about those socio-economic factors that place kids at-risk. The site builders are gathering information from a variety of sources and making it available down to the census tract level in maps, charts, text.

About SMART

The Socioeconomic Mapping and Resource Topography (SMART) System

"The SMART System for Kids"
What is it? The SMART System is a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based issues management system, developed to support the early identification of emerging local issues and provide resources to assist decision makers with implementing both rapid response and long-term plans.

The third phase of SMART has been completed. At this time, we have archival data mapped at the national, state, county, and census tract, and place/street levels. This data is coming from multiple sources, including: the United States Census Bureau, OJJDP’s Statistical Briefing Book, the Helping America’s Youth website, and the Office of Justice Programs’ Grants Management System.

This system will allow the users to locate resources and incidents of crime and delinquency and other social indicators, visualize the data, and perform complex location-based analysis that should lead to better decision making.