Measuring Success:
An Exploratory Study of United States Bahá'í Local Spiritual Assemblies and the Five Year Plan

by Armin J. Jezari

About: This Applied Research Project is an exploration of the functioning of a typical United States Bahá’í Local Spiritual Assembly (LSA)—which is an administrative part of the Bahá’í Faith, an international nonprofit religious organization—based on the Five Year Plan and scholarly literature on public administration. The object of the study is to measure to what degree a typical Local Spiritual Assembly is adopting characteristics of effective public administration based on directives found in the Five Year Plan. Three working hypotheses relating to communication, engagement, and learning are formed about the typical LSA. A survey was sent out to over 800 Local Spiritual Assemblies to measure LSA success in each of the three categories. A total of 167 Assemblies replied to the survey for a response rate of twenty percent. At this stage of development, the typical Bahá’í Local Spiritual Assembly ranked between weak/moderate and moderate in each category.