Creating systems of evaluation
Our approach to evaluation is focused on helping groups doing great work share and leverage their successes. We help organizations define goals and action plans that align with their organizational values and work toward achieving their identified outcomes. To accurately measure and monitor progress toward project goals, we help groups connect with their data to better understand and use it for their own purposes. We develop processes for analyzing new and existing data, including the creation of contextualized instruments.
We conduct community-based participatory research through a practice-to-research-to-practice feedback loop, designed to facilitate and sustain continuous improvement at all levels of administration and service provision. The ultimate goal of our collaborative mixed-methods evaluation research is to provide useful analyses of the best available data, as timely as possible, to inform treatment, programmatic, and system level decisions. To do this we design comprehensive studies that capture diverse perspectives from a multitude of sources, some examples of which include conducting interviews, focus groups, town halls, and community surveys.
Creating opportunities for communication and integration of all perspectives is central to our work. We convene a purposeful arrangement of key stakeholders to ensure evaluation activities are both informed by and contribute to the day-to-day and long-term project functioning. The primary goal of Evaluation Advisory Boards is to ensure that decision making is data driven and inclusive.
We study how groups work and how collaboration develops. We use this expertise to help community groups build opportunity-oriented partnerships and transition from thinking and planning to action, generating innovative solutions to complex social challenges.
Securing the support of key stakeholders is vital to any initiative. We partner with other agencies to identify potential funding opportunities and assist in proposal development and submission to promote a collective vision.
We engage diverse audiences, ranging from local families to experts and policy makers, utilizing tailored findings and appealing visualizations to advocate for change and amplify community knowledge.