Innovators in Rural Community Economic Development

Evaluation of the Advantage Valley Entrepreneurial Development System Collaborative

Tags: Coaching, Community Economic Development, Evaluation, Measurement, You Get What You Measure

Client Name: Advantage Valley Entrepeneurial League System

Client Type: Network/Collaborative

Year: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008

Location: West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio

Yellow Wood Associates was selected as the evaluator for the Advantage Valley Entrepreneurial Development System. Advantage Valley was one of six initiatives funded by the Kellogg Foundation to experiment with a variety of approaches for encouraging entrepreneurship across all sectors in rural areas. Yellow Wood’s evaluation had two essential components. First, we used You Get What You Measure® to assist the Collaborative in identifying key leverage points for change related to their goals. Members of the Collaborative worked together to create measures of change for key leverage indicators and collected baseline information for each measure. The second component of our evaluation was to serve as learning coaches for Collaborative members, staff, and others engaged in the hard work of implementing cultural change.