Resources and Tools
These resources offer research, data, and tips to help your organization answer questions and evaluate your work.
☰On This Page
Minnesota Compass
Minnesota Compass tracks and analyzes trends in topics that affect our quality of life. Compass gives everyone in our state a common foundation to identify, understand, and act on issues that affect our communities. Get the latest data and trends on education, economy and workforce, health, housing, public safety, and more.
Collaboration Factors Inventory

A free tool to assess how your collaboration is doing on 22 research-tested success factors. The inventory takes about 15 minutes to complete. Distribute the inventory to a small group of leaders in your collaborative, during a general meeting, or via mail to all members; tally your score manually or online.
- Buy Collaboration: What Makes it Work, A Review of Research Literature on Factors Influencing Successful Collaboration (3rd ed.), for an in-depth review of collaboration research and to learn more about the inventory.
- See additional resources for collaboration in the online companion to the 3rd edition of the book.
- View the inventory, a 44-item list of collaboration factors.
- Read the RAND study reporting reliability data for the instrument.
Permission to use the inventory is granted for private, non-commercial, and education purposes only. All use requires an acknowledgement of the source and author of the work. No resale use may be made of the inventory without written permission.
Metrics for Healthy Communities
Designed with cross-sector collaboration in mind, Metrics for Healthy Communities is a site to get you started in planning for and measuring the impact of initiatives funded and developed to improve community health and well-being.
Related: Read Metrics for Healthy Communities: A tool for leaders of community health initiatives
Program Evaluation and Research Tips
Trauma-Informed Evaluation: Tip Sheet for Collecting Information
Incorporating a trauma-informed approach to collecting information from clients serves as a universal precaution ensuring you approach sensitive topics carefully. Read the report »Effectively Using Qualitative Data: Tips from the Wilder Research Program Evaluation Workshop Series
This tip sheet provides pointers for processing, analyzing, and interpreting qualitative data to get the highest-quality and most useful information. Read the report »evaluATOD: Evaluation Resources and Tools
evaluATOD offers free evaluation resources and tools for professionals working to promote health and well-being through prevention efforts.
Family and Community Engagement Tools
Use the Family and Community Engagement Tools tools to assess the current level of child development, program quality, and family and community engagement from the perspective of family and community knowledge systems.