Public Service Clinics Topics


Pomegranate Center

Agency/Program Overview

Founded in 1986, Pomegranate Center is a non-profit community design and development organization. We bring people together to build better communities. Pomegranate Center's work combines art with community planning, public participation, environmental methods, hands-on learning and mentoring in an integrated process to help communities become more livable,
sustainable, just and socially engaged. We do this through three programs:

  1. Community-Based Planning: We facilitate public processes that foster civic connection and commitment; help communities identify and attain common goals; find sustainable solutions to problems; and build long-term leadership capacity within communities.
  2. Community Gathering Places: We work with communities to create shared public spaces including parks, neighborhood focal points, community trails, and public artworks that contribute to community distinction, vitality and social interaction.
  3. Training and Outreach: We conduct educational outreach, research and training to stimulate community initiative, cooperation and leadership; and help neighborhoods, towns and cities plan for more livable, sustainable futures. Our goal is to share the philosophy and methods, our working models, and link with colleagues for mutual enrichment.

For more than two decades Pomegranate Center has served communities that could have never afforded the services of commercial design firms, architects, or contractors:

  • Low-income urban and rural communities.
  • High-density neighborhoods feeling the pressure of increasing development.
  • Cities and towns in search of a greater sense of identity and cohesion.

We do this by employing community skill and labor at every stage of development: from planning and design, art making and site construction. This is where our approach is unique. Many planners and designers work for communities. We work with communities. This involvement ensures that the design reflects local character and aspirations, belongs to the community, and is a catalyst for civic vitality.

Specific Research Question

How can we evaluate the impact of Pomegranate Center's projects on the lives of the community members we work with? How can we use the evaluation results to modify our community building model and improve future outcomes?

Additional Project Background

The goal of Pomegranate Center’s work is to increase a community's social cohesion, civic culture, participatory democracy and ability to problem-solve issues together, long after our involvement. As many organizations have discovered, it's difficult to evaluate this kind of
social efficacy as an outcome.

As a small organization (we currently operate with three full time and one part time team members, one Americorps participant, and three part-time volunteer interns) with a small operating budget, ongoing project evaluation has not been implemented as well as we would like.

This project focuses on developing an evaluation practice for the whole organization that is efficient, effective and that can slip into our organization culture and working practices easily and over time. We'll co-create evaluation tools that fit our projects and partners, an project evaluation cycle, and a guide for how to analyze and use the information collected to improve the impact of our work.

  • Develop evaluation tools, targeted to Pomegranate Center mission and culture, that are adaptable and easy to use
  • Create a regular evaluation "flow" that can be implemented on every Pomegranate Center project
  • Create an "information analysis" system that helps us use the information effectively
  • Train the Pomegranate Center team in the evaluation model

Key Steps

  • Get to know the Pomegranate Center team! Meet with staff and board to get acquainted with organizational culture
  • Attend one or two community meetings or project sites, so you can see the principles in action
  • Review literature and methods: Understand examples of the evaluation of participatory practices by other organizations and projects comparable in scope to Pomegranate Center
  • Conduct interviews/meetings with select past project partner
  • Analyze what's right for us: How does Pomegranate Center's culture, the experience of our collaborators, and the best practices and methods of project evaluation combine?
  • Create the evaluation tools: Synthesis of what's right for PC into tangible tools that achieve project goals
  • Develop an evaluation "flow"/cycle manual: Compile a user-friendly guide for the Pomegranate Center team to reference during implementation
  • Train the Pomegranate Center team on how to do the evaluation cycle

Additional Research Resources

You probably have more resource on evaluation models available through the University and your professors that we could offer. However, we have an extensive collection of books on community building, participatory democracy and the role of the commons.

If you have questions about this topic or would like more information, please contact Katya Matanovic, Managing Director.