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Designing Technical-Assistance Programs: Considerations For Funders And Lessons Learned, Jennifer Lyons, Sheila Dunleavy Hoag, Cara Orfield, Sonya Streeter

The Foundation Review

As foundations continue to provide grantees with technical assistance in addition to financial support, it is important to understand what works well, for whom, and in what circumstances. This reflective practice article aims to help funders who have identified a problem amenable to technical assistance to develop a strong program by providing support to a group of organizations addressing similar problems or by providing customized individual support.

Drawing on insights from evaluations of two technical-assistance programs, this article recommends five key issues for funders to consider when offering such a program: whose priorities will shape the agenda, how group composition …

How Do You Measure Up? Finding Fit Between Foundations And Their Evaluation Functions, Julia Coffman, Tanya Beer

The Foundation Review

As the number of foundations has grown, the philosophies and ways of working across the sector have diversified. This variance means that there is no one right model for how a foundation’s evaluation function should be designed. It is imperative for a foundation to think carefully about how the structure, position, focus, resources, and practices of its evaluation function can best fit its own needs and aspirations.

This article focuses on questions foundations can ask to assess that fit, and the specific considerations that can inform these decisions. It draws on 2015 benchmarking research conducted by the Center for Evaluation …

Key Ingredients For School Food Systems: An Evaluation Of The Orfalea Foundation’S School Food Initiative, Holly Carmichael Djang, Barbara Andersen, Tatiana Masters, Jan Vanslyke, Blair Beadnell

The Foundation Review

In 2007, the Orfalea Foundation launched a nine-year strategic effort aimed at empowering public school districts in California’s Santa Barbara County. The purpose was to implement food-service operations that offered nourishing meals and to create a culture that prioritized the health and wellness of children and families.

The initiative, which involved 84 schools and more than 50,000 students, assessed the capacity of the county’s school food services, including existing skill levels and equipment needs. Striving to tailor programming to specific needs, the foundation emphasized stakeholder involvement throughout the process.

The foundation took a number of steps to understand the value …

Developing A Framework For Grant Evaluation: Integrating Accountability And Learning, Shelley Scherer

The Foundation Review

Despite broad consensus among foundations on the value of capturing grant outcomes, there is no consensus on what to evaluate and how to define success, which makes it difficult for staff and grantees to navigate and apply multiple interpretations of evaluation “best practices.”

This article presents three questions designed to help foundations develop a framework for grant evaluation that reflects their beliefs about accountability and learning, balances evaluation costs and benefits, acknowledges the diversity of grants within the foundation’s portfolio, and allows their grantees to understand the foundation’s expectations for evaluation reporting.

A key takeaway from this article, drawn from …

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 …

Inquiry: A Participatory Approach For Understanding Stakeholder Perceptions, Matthew Militello, Christopher Janson, Drew Tonissen

The Foundation Review

This article addresses two important and elusive issues for funded projects: quantifiable measures and deep understandings of participant perceptions.

It describes the development of the InQuiry evaluation tool, which combines Q methodology (factor analysis process to quantify perceptions) with a qualitative participatory approach. InQuiry generates both quantified metrics of what participants believe about a given topic and also a rich narrative of why participants think the way they do. These data yield metrics for understanding fidelity, outcomes, and impacts.

Beginning with the history of a program funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, this article also illustrates the tool’s usefulness. The …