Evaluation & Applied Research

How do you know if your work is achieving your goals? What impact are you having on people?

We design an evaluation project to answer these questions and provide the knowledge and information you need. When you partner with us, we get to know you, your program and your reality and stay in close contact to understand and evaluate a program—and any changes it may go through—in real time.

We ask four questions when designing evaluation plans:

1. Who is the audience that needs information?
2. What information does that audience want and/or need?
3. How will that audience use information?
4. What kinds of evidence and data will be seen as credible and reliable, and to whom?

And we use different types of evaluation to get the information you need:

• A developmental evaluation helps you if you’re just starting a new project to determine what you should focus on with a more continuous feedback loop as the project develops.
• A formative evaluation helps you understand how your program is working on the ground and determines what parts of it are effective and what can be improved.
• An impact or summative evaluation answers the big question for you, “what happens to participants as a result of our work?”

We join for “meaning making” sessions to share our learnings with you and your audiences. Together we dive into and learn from the findings.

How do you become more knowledgeable about a field?

We partner with you to develop applied research about a specific sector, population, or question that can then directly inform practice and philanthropy. We do not do research for research’s sake. Rather, all of our projects are designed to develop usable and useful knowledge and information, relevant to you. As with program evaluation, “meaning making” sessions enable us to share learnings with you and your audiences.