The last four steps in this generalized approach to organizing/building a community include

implementing the intervention strategy and activities that were selected in the previous step,
evaluating the outcomes of the plans of action, maintaining the outcomes over time, and if
necessary, going back to a previous step in the process—“looping back”—to modify or
restructure the work plan to organize the community.
Implementation of the intervention strategy includes identifying and collecting the
necessary resources for implementation and creating the appropriate time line for
implementation. Often the resources can be found within a community, and thus horizontal
relationships, the interaction of local units with one another, are needed. Other times the
resources must be obtained from units located outside the community; in this case, vertical
relationships, those where local units interact with extracommunity systems, are needed. An
example of this latter relationship is the interaction between a local nonprofit organization and
a state agency with which it has contact.
Evaluation of the process often involves comparing the long-term health and social out-
comes of the process to the goals that were set in an earlier step. Some scholars8 have indicated
that such traditional evaluations of community organizing efforts are not easy to carry out and
have some limitations. There are times when evaluations are not well planned or funded. As
such they may fail to capture the shorter term, system-level effects with which community
organizing is heavily concerned, such as improvements in organizational collaboration, com-
munity involvement, capacity, and healthier public policies or environments.
Maintaining or sustaining the outcomes may be one of the most difficult steps in the entire
process. It is at this point that organizers need to seriously consider the need for a long-term
capacity for problem solving. Finally, through the steps of implementation, evaluation, and
maintenance of the outcomes, organizers may see the need to “loop back” to a previous step in
the process to rethink or rework before proceeding onward in their plan.