A Case Study of Program Evaluation in Local Government: Building Consensus through Collaboration

This article explores the potential of the collaborative approach for local government program evaluation, particularly programs administered by nonprofits. City budget staff in Charlotte, North Carolina, partnered with the nonprofit in charge of a special tax district in a collaborative evaluation (CE) to assess the district's impact. An examination of this experience suggests that CEs are costly in terms of time and staff resources and raises questions about cooption and bias. However; it also suggests the promise of increased communication and better relations between local governments and nonprofits, improved evaluation skills ofprogram staff and increased likelihood of utilization of evaluation results.