EVALUATIONS OF BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICTS Ensuring Relevance for Individual Communities

Growing needs for accountability and transparency mean that the special public-private partnerships formed to revitalize business districts need to perform more and better evaluations of their performance. There are some standard evaluation methods that will apply in almost all cases, and most business improvement districts (BIDs) will need to customize their evaluations to address the special questions and circumstances they face at the time of evaluation. Good evaluation work is an important part of continuous learning and improvement; it can serve a critical role in the maturation of a BID and the confidence of its stakeholders in its performance.