CRE's commitment to concrete results for low-income communities has led it to develop various methods for self-evaluation.

CRE has three primary goals for its evaluation of client work:

1. To assess whether its consulting has led to short and/or long-term change in our clients' organizational capacities and, ultimately, their performance;
2. To solicit feedback for CRE staff consultants, to inform the continuous improvement of their craft; and
3. To identify trends and/or systemic improvements to CRE's client process, practice areas, or offerings that may be needed to improve CRE's responsiveness and effectiveness with clients.

CRE undertakes three types of evaluation activity:

1. Immediate Client Feedback/Client Satisfaction: CRE Evaluation staff contacts approximately 20% of its clients within 3-6 months of "close-out" to solicit the client's assessment of the effects of short-term changes and feedback on CRE's work.
2. Long-term Measuring Impact Study: CRE is engaged in a 6- year quantitative study which collects data from both clients and their CRE consultants in order to assess change in organization management and performance and to identify factors that support or inhibit successful capacity building.
3. Project-Related Assessment: CRE undertakes project- specific evaluation work to measure the effectiveness of various outcome directed program initiatives (e.g., expansion of HIV prevention activities, increases in Federal government funding).