Once you have prepared a strong list of actions, think about the time it will take to complete those actions and accomplish each goal. Also consider the feasibility of different goals. How many actions are associated with each goal and what will be the level of effort needed to complete them? Also, how will your team leverage the assets you identified to alleviate work towards each goal? If for one goal your team identified several assets that will make it easier to accomplish, then you might prioritize it for the short term. On the other hand, if your group has some gaps in skills or relationships needed to accomplish a goal, then you might need to push it further back in your timeline. Here are some suggestions to consider as you build your timeline:

• Try to have a mix of short-term and long-term goals. This will help motivate your team with some early wins while also having a target further down the road to maintain momentum.
• Organize your goals by priority-level. The ranking exercise in Phase 2 can help you focus your energy on the goals that are most important to the community.
• As with your goals, aim for a timeline that balances being realistic and aspirational.
• Build in moments for celebration. The path you’re building out will have challenging moments that will need to be met with opportunities to recognize your team’s accomplishments.

Example timeline

The impact of your efforts

Alongside the discussion of goals and actions, the question that will inevitably come up is how to track and measure your impact. It’s important to have a sense from the start of how you will know when you have accomplished your goals, as well as how to know how much progress you have made along the way. This is where having your actions broken down into smaller steps will help as one way of tracking the progress you are making. Feel free to develop your own materials, but if you use the provided table to document all your actions, then you could make sure to periodically (weekly, monthly or bi-monthly) review the list and note which actions have been completed. If you’re halfway into the time you said it would take to achieve your goal(s) but have much more than half of your actions to take, then that is an indication to modify your timeline or reevaluate your expected impact. Build in some kind of check-in into your process so that you can adjust your strategy along the way.

Depending on the types of actions you will be taking, you can track numbers, too. Metrics can help you evaluate your success, and many resources already exist to help you define your impact in ways that are specific and quantifiable. For example, if you survey community residents, you can track the number of individuals from whom you collect input and gather other helpful information such as the block or part of the neighborhood they represent. It is also important to understand the limitations of these metrics. Community work can be hard to measure in traditional ways since there are many intangible qualities that speak to the trust, resilience and kinship found in healthy neighborhoods. What is the everyday experience of someone in a vibrant community? How would they describe their relationship with their neighbors? What is the feeling of a resident in a neighborhood that has equitable distribution of tree canopy and strong social networks? One strategy to assess these dimensions of your impact is to envision it, document it and use that as a gauge to assess your progress. Consider the questions below, reflect and write down your thoughts somewhere you can revisit them later:

• How will accomplishing these goals feel in the community?

What will residents say about the changes they’ve experienced in the community?

How will progress towards those goals inspire hope in the community?

How will people see themselves and their desires in those project outcomes?

• What will accomplishing these goals look like in the community?

How will your goals enhance physical aspects of the community?

Even if your goals don’t have to do with physically changing spaces in the community, how will your goals influence people to use them in positive ways?

What new activities or interests will people take part in that will be visible in the community?

Who will be positively impacted by your efforts? Kids? Families? Artists?

• What will accomplishing these goals sound like in the community?

If people begin using parks or other public spaces in new ways, what will be heard?

If trees are planted in the community or increased care of existing trees happens, what is the sound of the supported wildlife?

If neighbors feel stronger social bonds or connections because of the success of your efforts, what is the sound of their interactions?

Your reflections to these prompts will help articulate your vision. Having that clarity will make it easier for you to communicate it to others and inspire them to engage with the work. Especially when working in communities that have been disenfranchised, inspiration and hope are incredibly important to maintain motivation. Of course, hope also needs to be met with follow-through and commitment. Keep exploring other ways to communicate your impact and consider how you can use both quantitative and qualitative data in combination. Some additional considerations for how to collect input on your progress include:

• Conduct interviews or collect stories from community members.
• Develop a survey asking community members about the changes they witnessed in the community because of your team’s work.
• Ask for feedback via social media posts. If social media groups exist for community members, use them to share out information and collect resident feedback.
• Have your team and a group of community members complete the Tree Equity Score exercise in this guide at the start and end of your project. Reflect on any experienced changes and discuss as a team.
• Conduct sound field recordings before and after the work that can be shared with the community.
• With their consent, incorporate community organizations into funding proposals and think about how measurement and monitoring are integrated.