Introduction
In 2006, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the Department of Health and Human Services established the Communities Empowering Youth (CEY) program. CEY’s intent was to address the capacity building needs of partnerships of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) that were tackling issues of gang violence, youth violence, or child abuse and neglect. CEY projects consisted of a partnership between a lead organization/institution (the grantee) and at least two other partnering NPOs that provided services to youth within a specific geographical area. In 2006 ACF, through the Office of Community Services (OCS), awarded three-year grants to 100 CEY partnerships; in 2007 ACF funded 31 additional partnerships.
Abt Associates conducted the evaluation of the CEY program for ACF. This evaluation included annual surveys of the organizations receiving CEY funding over the program’s three-year grant cycle. The survey measures changes in two types of capacity: 1) organizational capacity of each lead organization and their partner organizations and 2) partnership capacity.
This technical report describes the methodology of the baseline (2008), first follow-up (2009), and second follow-up (2010) surveys, and provides detailed tables of results. It is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the CEY evaluation, including the study design and definitions of organizational capacity and partnership capacity. Chapter 2 discusses the evaluation methodology including sampling design, weights, and analytic approach. Chapter 3 presents baseline organizational characteristics and the results of the temporal comparisons from the survey data. Chapter 4 presents the subgroup comparisons.
This Technical Report is a companion document to the main report, Building Non-Profit Capacity and Community Partnerships: Findings from the Communities Empowering Youth Evaluation. The main report includes a summary of the study’s findings and conclusions.