Written by Philip Hamilton
Carinity Mission Engagement Manager – Community Development & Youth
In community transformation, I often find myself asking: How do we know when real change is happening? It’s one thing to run programs, count participants, or complete reports—but genuine transformation runs deeper. It’s about finding the fruit: the evidence that lives and communities are truly changing.
From Outputs to Outcomes
In my work, I see how easy it is to measure what’s visible—numbers trained, meals served, events held. These are outputs, the things we expect to see. But transformation begins when we start looking at outcomes—the things we want to see. These reflect the behavioural change we’re longing for in people and communities.
For example, instead of recording that 30 volunteers were trained, we might celebrate that those volunteers keep serving, invite others, and step into leadership roles. That’s the kind of fruit that reveals something deeper is happening.
This shift from activity to outcome reminds me of the biblical principle of fruitfulness: “By their fruit you will recognise them.” Transformation takes root not in what we do, but in the growing patterns of connection, participation, and ownership that emerge over time.
The Fruit of Connection
One of the first signs of meaningful impact, in my experience, is connection. Healthy community work begins when people start to belong. But how can connection be measured meaningfully?
I often ask two simple questions:
1. How do we know when we’re starting to see the fruit of connection?
2. How do we measure this meaningfully?
Practical indicators can be surprisingly simple:
· More people returning for a community meal or event.
· More referrals between initiatives, as people move from one connection space to another.
These are the subtle signs that isolation is giving way to relationship—that individuals are not just being served, but drawn in. Connection grows when people return because they feel seen, welcomed, and valued.
The Fruit of Participation
As connection deepens, participation follows. People begin to move from attending to engaging. Drawing on the insights of my colleague Ash Barker (Seedbeds), I see participation as the stage where individuals begin expressing their gifts and joining in the work of community building.
Again, I ask: How do we measure this meaningfully?
Indicators might include:
· A growing trend of people volunteering or serving others.
· More people discovering and using their gifts within the community.
Participation is the heartbeat of empowerment. It’s the moment when people stop seeing themselves as recipients and start seeing themselves as contributors—when the lines between “helper” and “helped” begin to blur.
The Fruit of Transformation
At the heart of this framework lies transformation—the deep, long-term change that happens when individuals and communities begin to flourish. Transformation can be harder to quantify, but it’s often the easiest to recognise through stories.
I think of examples across the communities and projects Carinity supports where mentoring, community support, and purpose came together to change the direction of a life. These are the moments that tell us transformation has taken root.
Meaningful indicators of transformation might include:
· More personal or collective stories of change being shared.
· Participants leading their own initiatives or moving into employment.
· Communities beginning to identify and address their own needs from within.
Transformation is both measurable and miraculous—it’s where statistics meet stories, and numbers give way to names.
Measuring What Matters
When I ask “How do we measure fruit meaningfully?”, I’m really asking us to reimagine evaluation—not as a bureaucratic burden, but as a spiritual discipline. Measuring well means learning to see the signs of the Kingdom breaking in: restored relationships, renewed purpose, and resilient communities.
This approach draws heavily from Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), which begins not with needs but with strengths. At Carinity, we’ve seen that when we measure fruit through the lens of ABCD, we start noticing how people’s gifts and local assets create change that lasts.
A Framework for Faithful Practice
Ultimately, finding fruit and measuring it meaningfully calls me—and all of us—to stay faithful in both the practice and the purpose of community engagement. Outputs matter, but outcomes matter more. Activities are necessary, but relationships are transformative.
As churches, ministries, and community organisations, our task is not just to count heads but to cultivate hearts—to measure the growth of connection, participation, and transformation as evidence of God’s Spirit at work among us.
For me, finding fruit is not about chasing results but recognising grace. The fruit we seek—connection, participation, transformation—isn’t manufactured through programs but grown through presence, prayer, and partnership.
When we learn to notice and measure that kind of fruit, our reports no longer just tell stories of numbers, but of lives renewed—and communities becoming all they were created to be.
