The Saltmarsh Habitat and Avian Research Program (SHARP) has assembled a large collection of historical and contemporary measures of plant and bird communities in tidal marshes from Virginia to Maine. In the current project, we used this platform to begin to assess the efficacy of restoration activities and to provide planning guidance to enhance the future resiliency of natural coastal assets. Our primary focus was to collected elevation, vegetation, and bird data to quantify baseline conditions at National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) funded Hurricane Sandy resiliency sites throughout the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states and at paired control sites. These data have been combined with similar data collected at Department of the Interior-funded resiliency sites across the same region into a common database, and will form the basis for long-term investigations into the efficacy of coastal restoration and management work.