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Public policymakers increasingly are contracting with nonprofit organizations (NPOs) for innovations in the creation of new service systems in low-income communities. Interorganizational collaboration and cooperation are essential to such innovation. Neighborhood-based institutional arrangements require social work practitioners to work across multiple systems simultaneously--skills that most are not trained to possess. This article develops a theoretical and conceptual framework for neighborhood-based collaboration by NPOs; analyzes the main concepts of innovation in the design and implementation of a collaboration to prevent child maltreatment in an undervalued neighborhood; and draws implications for social policy, social work practice, and social work research.

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This article demonstrates how a user-friendly evaluation of a federally funded homeless prevention program using an action research approach--and using a logic model as the analytic framework--informed multiple stakeholders, including members of Congress, other decision makers, and Family Center practitioners. The program's target population was very low-income families at risk of being evicted from public housing. The authors discuss the methods used, the application of the logic model, and the study's findings as they unfolded in four phases: (1) logic modeling as program planning, (2) conceptualizing the intervention, (3) delineating implementation processes, and (4) determining the range of client outcomes. Implications for social policy, social work practice, and evaluation research are discussed.