Evaluation Consultant

About Trust for Public Land

In a world where isolation and division are on the rise, time in nature can spark hope, build common ground, and bring people together. That’s why Trust for Public Land connects everyone to the benefits and joys of the outdoors. When we build shared and inclusive parks and activate them with locally relevant programming, we create a future defined by connection—to the land and to each other—and a feeling of deep communal belonging.

Since 1972, TPL has protected more than 4 million acres of public land, created more than 5,504 parks, trails, schoolyards, and iconic outdoor places, raised $111 billion in public funding for parks and public lands, and connected nearly 9.7 million people to the outdoors.

TPL’s On Common Ground program scales proven, high‑impact park programming strategies that activate America’s parks and park professionals to deliver consistent and effective social infrastructure outcomes that can mitigate the impacts of toxic polarization and social isolation.

Our publication of the Common Ground Framework is a first‑of‑its‑kind field guide that established a comprehensive evidence base for park practitioners and advocates across the country to leverage in the development of park and open space programs. In 2023, we evaluated the Framework and its activation in nine communities around the country. This served as an important beta test, as well as an early baseline for measuring the success of future efforts.

You can read about these pilot programs on our website.

Since that initial beta test, we have supported 14 new projects with small grants, peer coaching, and technical assistance. Our technical assistance work varies based on the needs of each grantee, including activities like evaluation and storytelling support, troubleshooting programmatic challenges, creating logic models, and/or connecting organizations to new tools and resources. These grantees have implemented park stewardship programs, recreation activities, and participatory design processes.

Trust for Public Land seeks an evaluation partner to help us better understand how park‑based community engagement practices can strengthen social connection and bridge divides across communities. Through this evaluation, we hope to identify the community engagement strategies, program conditions, and technical assistance supports that contributed most strongly to successful project outcomes.

The findings from this evaluation will help TPL:

• Strengthen future iterations of the On Common Ground program;
• Better understand the impact of our technical assistance and coaching model;
• Identify scalable practices that can be shared with the parks and recreation field;
• Contribute to the growing evidence base around parks as social infrastructure.

​TPL has already begun collecting data from On Common Ground grantees (9 Beta testers and 14 current grantees) as they complete their projects. Existing data sources include:

• Pre/post participant surveys using The Community Compass
• Grantee exit interviews conducted by TPL staff
• Grant applications
• Coaching notes or technical assistance records
• Additional project artifacts, where available.

We anticipate that the selected evaluator will review existing materials and recommend whether additional data collection methods are needed to answer the evaluation questions.

• What impacts did grantees’ programs have on participants and the broader community?
• What changes in social connection, civic engagement, or community cohesion were observed through these projects?
• What organizational, programmatic, or policy changes have grantees implemented or explored following their participation in On Common Ground?
• What longer‑term community impacts, if any, have grantees observed following project completion?

• What community engagement practices were most impactful for participants?
• Which practices were most accessible, feasible, or sustainable for practitioners to implement?
• What common conditions or approaches contributed to successful participant engagement across…