Coalitions have key roles in helping their communities accomplish the following: (1) Track the level of literacy in the community; (2) Use that information to help identify what, and how much, literacy assistance is needed; (3) Assess the extent to which community literacy programs are meeting the need, including how well existing literacy programs are doing; (4) Coordinate the use of the outcome information to help identify successful ("best") practices; and (6) Provide assistance to literacy programs to help them both track and improve their effectiveness. This guide addresses how community literacy coalitions and their partner organizations can track the progress they are making to improve literacy in their communities, then use this information to improve their activities and, therefore, the effectiveness of their work. The guide provides suggestions for a community literacy outcome measurement process that covers both individual literacy assistance programs and the community Literacy Coalition. Although the guide focuses more on performance measurement and performance management from the perspective of community Literacy Coalitions, many of its recommendations may also be helpful to individual literacy service providers. Ten sections comprise this guide. Following an Introduction, Section Two provides suggestions for a process for selecting and implementing a community literacy outcome measurement process. Sections Three, Four, and Five suggest candidate outcome indicators and data collection sources for ten major community literacy activities. Section Six provides suggestions to coalitions and direct service providers for making practical customer surveys, valuable tools for obtaining feedback on outcomes for many indicators. Section Seven identifies basic analytic steps for maximizing use of outcome information. Section Eight suggests a number of ways coalitions and other direct service providers can use the outcome information to improve programs transforms performance measurement into performance management. Section Nine suggests key roles that literacy coalitions in producing a highly useful community performance management process. Section Ten addresses a number of frequently asked questions about the performance measurement process. Three appendixes are included, providing: (1) a stand-alone list of the performance indicators presented in the guide; (2) examples of questions that might be included in a survey of literacy organizations in your community in order to obtain data for some of the indicators; and (3) a questionnaire that can be used to obtain data from learners. (Contains 12 exhibits.)