Outdoor recreation is a growing and diverse economic sector; however many rural communities lack the capacity and resources to successfully capitalize on the recreation economy. There is a recognized need for a unified system of indicators to balance the benefits and costs of different stakeholders to help manage the impacts of the increasing interest in visiting rural areas, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, a multi-state, integrated project team that involves research and extension faculty is developing a process for measuring and evaluating sustainable tourism performance indicators in the northeast U.S.. By understanding the factors that make destinations resilient the project will produce policy recommendations and general guidelines for improving destination and gateway community well-being. We present the results of a Delphi study and principal component analysis to identify sustainability indicators for rural destinations and discuss Extension outreach efforts that are building capacity to use data as a management tool.