A consensus is growing among funders and practitioners that effective performance measurement is essential to improving the results of community change efforts. Gathering and using performance data can be a daunting task, however, particularly for place-based initiatives that engage multiple service providers and aspire to bring about population-level change. Drawing upon guidance given to the twelve implementation grantees in the US Department of Education’s Promise Neighborhood initiative, as well as lessons learned from similar efforts around the country, this document summarizes six key steps for collecting and using data to track and improve the performance and results of major place-based initiatives.