Good Old Lower East Side, Inc. (GOLES) is a neighborhood housing and community organization, serving the Lower East Side of Manhattan since 1977. Over the past forty years, GOLES’ work has led to significant victories in policy and public awareness, as well as in seemingly small wins with immeasurably broader ripple effects, like preventing a family’s unlawful eviction or developing a neighborhood tenant leader.

As a community membership organization, standing with the people to preserve, protect, and defend the Lower East Side, it provides services to over 3,000 people and reaches over 10,000 people every year via organizing efforts. GOLES works on several fronts in order to engage, educate, and empower neighborhood residents. Its multi-pronged approach consists of direct service, public education, community organizing, community-based participatory research, and coalition building.

With support from the Change Capital Fund, GOLES engaged in a process of evaluating its data management system and the efficacy of its programming, allowing the organization to better understand and organize its membership and to connect service recipients and public programming participants with ongoing organizing campaigns.