Developing measures to evaluate the impact of grant-funded urban and community forestry activities in Connecticut, USA

Abstract

Assessment of urban forest management program activities requires clearly defined objectives, targets, criteria, and specific performance indicators of success (Kenney et al. 2011). However, because programs and activities are embedded within a broader organizational context, assessing successful implementation involves understanding the relationships between the program and its environment. (McDavid et al 2018). With the unprecedented investments happening in the discipline and practice of urban and community forestry, Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (U.S) funded research to investigate new ways to quantify the impact of FY 2022 urban and community forestry grant program funding.

This presentation will briefly describe the grant program funding and define how a program evaluation framework and its supporting components were applied to assess the impact of funded urban and community forestry activities. We will also describe how multiple sources of data were used to capture discrete measures from each grant project. First, a questionnaire was used to gather information about the outputs of each grant project, including planted trees, stewardship practices as well as human capital and communication activities. A second questionnaire elicited more information about the organizations’ histories, structure, and partnerships. Lastly, key informant interviews were conducted to expand on the development of each grant project and to identify the grant partners’ perspectives of expected outcomes stimulated by this funding. Lastly, we will describe the process of synthesizing these data in aggregate to communicate the impact of urban and community forestry investments to the state legislature and to future community grant participants.