The Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development's What Works Conference Series hosted a joint regional conference with the National Value Added Agriculture Conference on "Enhancing Food Security and Rural Viability through Innovative Food System Practices and Opportunities" in May 2014 in Baltimore, Maryland. Melissa Levy and Samantha Dunn co-presented “Developing Measures that Matter” at the conference. In this session attendees learned how food hubs have used You Get What You Measure®, a systems-based analysis to identify their priority measures that will tell them if they are making progress towards their goals. Participants also learned about developing their own goals and measures. Participants learned how to identify goals, differentiate goals from actions, and how to help diverse groups of stakeholders work toward shared goals. They also learned about the impact of measures from real-life examples of food hubs using this approach, including how one food hub is making progress toward their goal of achieving scale and impact through more involvement with retail buyers and another hub is working to ensure farmers are successful wholesale participants by increasing visibility in the community.
Innovators in Rural Community Economic Development
