This report describes the background, objectives, and design of the Opening Doors evaluation. It begins below with a brief review of the research on community college students and their experiences. Chapter 2 then provides a general description of the six colleges that are participating in the demonstration and the four interventions that are being evaluated. Chapter 3 presents details about the Opening Doors research design, the research questions that will be addressed, the types of data that will be gathered, and the strengths and limitations of the evaluation. Chapter 4 describes the targeted population and the characteristics of the first group of students to enroll in the demonstration. Chapter 5 concludes the report with a summary of the publications that MDRC plans to produce over the course of the evaluation. The following are appended: (1) Analytic Methods for Estimating the Impacts of Opening Doors; and (2) Characteristics that Define Students' Eligibility to Participate in Opening Doors by Community College. (Contains 6 tables & 1 figure.)