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Communities often begin implementing their plans immediately after the conference. PCPN will follow up with communities six months and one year after the Community session to encourage and support their local progress, evaluate the success of the Community session, and collect data to inform the national roll-up effort.
Since Future Search focuses on enabling communities to develop and gain commitment for plans that lead to lasting improvements, the follow up and evaluation will trace relationships that were established, projects that were accomplished, efforts that were initiated, and other new forms of organization that were created as a result of the Future Search. The basic question the community (and the PCPN program) will be able to answer is: "What are they able to do after the Future Search that they could not do before?" This follow up reinforces the "Prosperous Community" theme because it helps the community learn about its own ability to change, which is itself a marker of prosperity. Over time, the community projects that were initiated during each initial Prosperous Community Future Search session will be tracked to determine the extent to which communities succeed in creating conditions that maximize the potential for all residents to prosper.
In addition to the local benefits of the follow up and evaluation activity, the evaluation data will be used in the national roll-up to help answer the following questions:
- How much more are local communities capable of doing for themselves beyond what they are doing now?
- What are the minimum essential services that can only be provided by state and federal government agencies?
- How can government funds be leveraged to support local initiatives that get results?
- How can the structural barriers that contribute to poverty be addressed?
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