Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Maximizing Return: An Evaluation Of The Walton Family Foundation’S Approach To Investing In New Charter Schools, Matthew Carr, Marc Holley

The Foundation Review

The Walton Family Foundation’s social-impact goals include reform of the American K-12 education system by increasing the number of highquality schools available to low-income students. One of the foundation’s signature strategies toward this end is to support charter schools.

This article presents the findings of a study that suggests the foundation’s investment approaches to charter school startups have been successful in supporting the creation of high-quality seats for low-income students. Specifically, the foundation has invested in charter schools where test-score performance has shown greater improvements than at local district schools and charter schools that have not received foundation funding.

These …

Redefining Expectations For Place-Based Philanthropy, Katelyn Mack, Hallie Preskill, James Keddy, Moninder-Mona K. Jhawar

The Foundation Review

This article discusses how The California Endowment has used a midcourse strategic review to refine Building Healthy Communities, aiming to provide insight for other place-based initiatives and to add to the body of knowledge about how to support transformative community change.

With Building Healthy Communities, the endowment is taking a new approach to community change using a dual strategy to build community capacity in 14 places and scale the impact of its local efforts through statewide policy advocacy and communications. In 2013, it commissioned a strategic review to reflect on what it has learned from the first three years of …

Evaluation Of An Advisory Committee As A Model For Patient Engagement, Cynthia Kendell, Robin Urquhart, Jill Petrella, Sarah Macdonald, Meg Mccallum

Patient Experience Journal

Patient engagement (PE) is not well defined and little guidance is available to those attempting to employ PE in decision-making relevant to health system improvement. After completing a 2-year PE project, overseen by an Advisory Committee, our objectives were: 1) to evaluate how effectively the project team engaged the Advisory Committee, 2) to examine how Advisory Committee members perceived PE and their role in PE, and 3) to identify barriers and facilitators to PE in order to improve future efforts. Five members of the Advisory Committee completed semi-structured interviews post-project about their experiences. Thematic analysis identified four themes: the approach, …

The Impact Grants Initiative: Community-Participatory Grantmaking Modeled On Venture Philanthropy, Adin Miller, Elisa Gollub, Ilana Kaufman, Adina Danzig Epelman

The Foundation Review

· The Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund (JCF) launched the Impact Grants Initiative (IGI), a model of grant making based on venture philanthropy, but offering high engagement opportunities for previously unaffiliated local donors and community leaders.

· Before adopting the IGI model, the JCF used a community-participatory grantmaking approach that had become stale in engaging its donors, community leaders, and professional staff. Younger existing and potential donors were developing interests in documented outcomes, metrics, and impact, and those interests did not align with JCF’s grantmaking approach.

· IGI builds on the concepts of venture philanthropy, combining theories and techniques …

Climbing The Mountain: An Approach To Planning And Evaluating Public-Policy Advocacy, Sam Gill, Tom Freedman

The Foundation Review

· This article proposes a new methodology for planning and evaluating public-policy advocacy. The methodology is designed around a series of stages, each with a different set of strategic planning and assessment requirements.

· The article suggests that both planning and evaluative approaches that fail to take account of the necessary stages required to develop and then implement an advocacy strategy will likely assign the wrong indicators of success.

· This analysis is based on direct experience working with both policy processes and a wide range of foundations and nonprofits that have invested in public-policy advocacy, including the Rockefeller, Ford, …

Evaluating The United Nations Development Assistance Framework (Undaf) As A Strategic Programming Tool At The National Level, With Special Reference To Egypt, Rasha Mahmoud

Theses and Dissertations

The unique character of the United Nations (UN) imposes strategic challenges on the organization’s leadership and management structures at the national and the international level. In response to these challenges, the UN reform efforts, introduced in 1997, paved the way for the UN system effectiveness, efficiency and coherence. Emerging from the reform, the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) engages various development stakeholders in identifying and achieving national development priorities. This review found that the UNDAF is an effective strategic instrument that well-positions the UN at the national level and it enhances national capacities and supports national governments in identifying …

An Assessment Of Goal-Free Evaluation: Case Studies Of Four Goal-Free Evaluations, Brandon Youker, Allyssa Ingraham, Nicholas Bayer

Brandon W. Youker Ph.D

This article provides a descriptive review of four goal-free program evaluations (GFE). GFE is an evaluation model where the independent evaluator is intentionally screened from the program’s stated goals and objectives in hopes of reducing potential goal-related tunnel vision. The findings from these GFE case studies are focused in three areas: (1) elements of the programs that were evaluated and their existing evaluation contexts (e.g., pre-evaluation conditions, size of evaluation budget), (2) design of the GFEs (e.g., screening method, data collection methods), and (3) expertise of the goal-free evaluators (e.g., training, degrees attained). The findings indicate that, when employed, GFE …

An Empirical Evaluation Of The Influence Of Descriptive Representation On Human Resource Practice At The Local Government Level, Edward P. French, Doug Goodman, Minion K. C Morrison

Journal of Public Management & Social Policy

Significant changes in employee demographics and values and the nature of public service employment have impacted personnel administration. This study evaluates the impact of both gender and race on the assessment of current HRM practices and reforms at the local level of government. Results from a national survey are assessed in order to enhance the field’s understanding of whether differences in administrative perceptions and values attributed to these two factors have the potential to translate in HR policy positions that continue to embrace or strive to transcend traditional public personnel management. We find that although certain functions and activities are …

Raising The Bar – Integrating Cultural Competence And Equity: Equitable Evaluation, Jara Dean-Coffey, Jill Casey, Leon D. Caldwell

The Foundation Review

· Whether implicit or explicit, social justice and human rights are part of the mission of many philanthropies. Evaluation produced, sponsored, or consumed by these philanthropies that doesn’t pay attention to the imperatives of cultural competency may be inconsistent with their missions.

· The American Evaluation Association’s Statement on Cultural Competence provides those who produce, sponsor, and use evaluation an opportunity to examine and align their practices and policies within a context of racial and cultural equity and inclusion. The use of such a lens is paramount when evaluating a program whose goals touch on issues of equity or inclusion. …

Survey Instruments Used To Evaluate Foundation-Funded Nonprofit Capacity- Building Programs: Considerations For Organized Philanthropy, Catherine H. Brown

The Foundation Review

· Alongside a growing interest in nonprofit capacitybuilding programs has come a growing concern with the impact of these programs, especially by organizations that fund them. This article describes how the McKinsey Organizational Capacity and Assessment Tool and, to a lesser extent, the Abt Associates survey have been used to assess changes in nonprofit capacity as part of nonprofit capacity-building programs.

· Drawing on field experience with both survey instruments in the context of a foundationfunded nonprofit capacity-building program, this article compares the respective benefits and costs of these instruments from the perspective of evaluators as well as survey respondents. …

Evaluation And Measurement Of Patient Experience, Sherri L. Lavela Phd, Mph, Mba, Andrew S. Gallan Phd

Patient Experience Journal

Despite the increasing presence of a variety of measures of patient health care experiences in research and policy, there remains a lack of consensus regarding measurement. The objectives of this paper were to: (1) explore and describe what is known about measures and measurement of patient experience and (2) describe evaluation approaches/methods used to assess patient experience.

Patient-experience does not simply reflect clinical outcomes or adherence–driven outcomes; rather it seeks to represent a unique encompassing dimension that is challenging to measure. Several challenges exist when measuring patient experience, in part, because it is a complex, ambiguous concept that lacks a …

Lhds' Implementation And Evaluation Of Strategies To Target Psychological, Mental Health, And Other Behavioral Healthcare Needs Of The Underserved Population, Gulzar H. Shah, Huabin Luo, Carolyn J. Leep, Nancy L. Winterbauer

Health Policy and Management Faculty Presentations

Background: Underserved subgroups face barriers when accessing behavioral healthcare. Local health departments (LHDs) are charged with “linking people to needed personal health services and assure the provision of healthcare when otherwise unavailable”.

Research Objectives: 1) To assess the extent to which LHDs implement and evaluate strategies to target the behavioral healthcare needs for the underserved populations; 2) To identify factors that are associated with these undertakings.

Datasets and Sources: Data were drawn from the 2013 National Profile of Local Health Departments Study conducted by National Association of County and City Health Officials The Module 2 questionnaire of the Profile contained …

Harnessing Complexity: Analysis Methodology And Ethical Framework To Facilitate Utilization Of Video Data In Evaluations, Kurt A. Wilson

Dissertations

Most evaluations in the nonprofit and international development sectors are conducted in contexts of complexity; the specific intervention being evaluated is but one of many interrelated factors influencing the desired outcome. Video data, especially when directly generated by program participants, can provide both exceptionally rich qualitative data as well as contextually-relevant feedback within complex systems. Despite these unique strengths and opportunities, video data is underutilized in the field of evaluation. This dissertation addresses specific barriers associated with video data through three inter-related papers: Papers one and two (Chapters II and III) present the findings from two interrelated studies of an …

Validity Of The Educator Evaluation Instrument In The State Of West Virginia, Carla Howe

Wayne State University Dissertations

In the state of West Virginia, the educator evaluation system was implemented in 2010 as part of a comprehensive system of support to increase teacher effectiveness and student learning. As part of the system, the Educator Evaluation Instrument was developed to measure teachers' effectiveness. This study was conducted to determine whether the Educator Evaluation Instrument was valid for use in measuring effectiveness.

A hierarchical confirmatory factor analysis (HCFA) was conducted on the scores from the demonstration year. The data were not normal, nor was good model fit established based on the current model. Because good model fit could not be …

The Use Of Citation Speed To Understand The Effects Of A Multi-Institutional Science Center, Jan Youtie

Jan Youtie

The extent to which an article attracts citations has long been of interest. However, recent research has emphasized not just the receipt but also the pacing of citation. Citation speed has been shown to be affected by journal prestige and self-citation but also public funding of research. Amidst these viewpoints, this paper explores the speed of article citation of a multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary publicly funded research center relative to that of a comparison group of articles. Results indicate that articles by authors affiliated with the center are significantly more likely to have early-cited papers within the year of publication than the …

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 …

Goal-Free Evaluation: An Orientation For Foundations’ Evaluations, Brandon W. Youker, Allyssa Ingraham

The Foundation Review

· Goal-free evaluation (GFE), in program evaluation, is a model in which the official or stated program goals and objectives are withheld or screened from the evaluator.

· Several obstacles must be overcome in persuading foundations and programs to consider GFE as a viable option, because both tend to view goal attainment as intuitively and inextricably linked to evaluation.

· This article presents the case for GFE as a perspective that belongs in a foundation’s toolbox. In particular, this article demonstrates GFE’s actual use, highlights aspects of its methodology, and details its potential benefits.