We know that traditional metrics for measuring the impact of this work have been created by and for primarily white, male-led, philanthropic institutions, and that those indicators are often not community-driven. Thus, we work with our partner organizations to understand how they evaluate the success of their own programs in fostering political, cultural, and economic self-determination among the communities they work with.

 

We do not attach strings or unnecessary hoops to our funding - all Blue Heart grants are unrestricted core funding for the organizations to use as they see fit. Over time, we will aggregate metrics for our impact on political power-building across our partner organizations in the regions we work (similar models of iterative learning and evaluation have been adopted by other funders such as the Tipping Point Community and Solidaire).

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Because our grants are small and the organizations we fund are extremely capacity-strapped, we take a very lean approach to our reporting requirements. We do a streamlined assessment after 6 months of partnership, using the following questions: 

 

1. What did our partner organizations achieve in the 6 months since receiving funding?

2. How do the organization's programs help build the political power of low income communities and communities of color?

3. How are those programs giving people control over resources to support their own vision of a physically, culturally, economically, and ecologically flourishing community?

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