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Can Coaching Help Community Partnerships Promote Health Equity, Community Engagement, And Policy, Systems, And Environmental Changes? Results From An Evaluation, Jung Y. Kim, Lisa Schottenfeld, Michael Cavanaugh

The Foundation Review

Foundations and other entities have increasingly funded coaching and technical assistance to support multisector community partnerships to promote health and health equity. However, much remains to be learned about how coaching can best support these partnerships.

As part of its efforts to build a culture in which everyone in the United States has a fair opportunity to be healthy, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation partnered with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute to provide structured coaching to strengthen the capacities of community partnerships. The foundation contracted with Mathematica to evaluate the coaching program, focusing on whether it had an …

The Unified Outcomes Project: Evaluation Capacity Building, Communities Of Practice, And Evaluation Coaching, Jay Wade, Leanne Kallemeyn, David Ensminger, Molly Baltman, Tania Rempert

The Foundation Review

Increased accountability from foundations has created a culture in which nonprofits, with limited resources and a range of reporting protocols from multiple funders, struggle to meet data-reporting expectations. Responding to this, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation in partnership with the Chicago Tribune launched the Unified Outcomes Project, an 18-month evaluation capacity-building project.

The project focused on increasing grantees’ capacity to report outcome measures and utilize this evidence for program improvement, while streamlining the number of tools being used to collect data among cohort members. It utilized a model that emphasized communities of practice, evaluation coaching, and collaboration between the foundation …

If You Build It, They Will Come: Creating The Space And Support For Real-Time Strategic Learning, Jewlya Lynn, Rebecca Kahn, Phillip Chung, Scott Downes

The Foundation Review

· Learning is a key tool for foundations seeking to improve their effectiveness, and they are beginning to use evaluation to learn about and improve their strategies. The Colorado Trust took this a step further and integrated strategic learning into a grant strategy, including supporting learning coaches for 14 of their grantees.

· The strategic learning framework consisted of three steps: systematic data collection, collective interpretation of information, and the use of that interpretation to improve strategies.

· This article reviews four of the cases, including three grantees and the foundation as a case, identifying methods of learning and resulting …