Assessing Section 4: Helping CDCs to Grow and Serve
Date Published: 02/01/2011
Author: Social Compact and Weinheimer & Associates
LISC, Enterprise, and Habitat commissioned Social Compact and Weinheimer & Associates to evaluate their use of HUD's Section 4 program, which supports training for community development corporation (CDC) boards and staffs, helps CDCs meet organizational needs (such as hiring new staff or improving financial management systems), pay for technical assistance (such as feasibility studies for new projects) and fund community projects. The program averaged just under $33 million a year between 2001 and 2009. Relying primarily on an online survey of 235 carefully sampled CDCs receiving Section 4 grants between 2001 and 2009, researchers tested whether the Section 4 theory of change was validated in practice. Did Section 4 investments produce observable organizational capacity growth? Was this growth linked to increased production of affordable housing and other community assets?
By overwhelming numbers, the CDCs surveyed and interviewed reported that Section 4 assistance helped them boost their capacity, and that their capacity grew significantly between 2001 and 2009. Section 4 assistance was rated as having a "moderate positive" or "significant positive" impact by a majority of CDC respondents in each of 12 organizational capacity dimensions. Investments in targeted areas of organizational capacity produced observable overall organizational capacity growth and enabled recipients to grow and boost their production of affordable housing and other community assets. Moreover, CDCs are implementing the kind of changes that will sustain their program and production growth over the long term, including raising more money, and from more types of sources.
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Topic: Policy
Type: Research paper