Second, the process gathers opinions and evidence on the ongoing collaboration between community residents and neighborhood organizations. Participants should review accounts from previous years, to gain a deeper sense of their collective journey. These discussions inevitably touch on sensitive matters of personal power, self-interest, and conflicting principles and perspectives. Written reports should not be treated as the complete objective truth. The meeting will have served its purpose if it helps participants build stronger work relationships and shared perspectives, come to terms with serious shortcomings in performance, and recognize and celebrate major accomplishments.
Accountability is the fundamental principle underlying evaluation efforts.
You may want to develop, together with stakeholders, your own parameters to determine levels or thresholds of accountability. The level of an organization's accountability to community residents is closely connected to residents' awareness and understanding of community issues. It may require very long term organizing efforts before low-income communities promote their interests through mainstream political processes without outside support. Often, the community-building collaboration increases impact and improves the quality of results by utilizing the strengths and creativity of a wider range of community stakeholders. To facilitate a discussion among stakeholders on this topic, it will be helpful first to present a summary of the outcomes produced by collaborating partners, based upon the indicators that apply to their specific activities.