On February 7th, the Council on Foundations published Meg Long’s blog, describing five heartening evaluation and philanthropic learning trends to watch in 2017, including:
- Integrating Evaluation into Strategy
- Driving social sector R&D
- Expanding the practice of culturally responsive evaluation (CRE)
- Sharpening our role as communicators and storytellers
- Strengthening our value as a learning ally
I hope Ms. Long is correct, because Social Capital Valuations’ (SCV’s) groundbreaking work over the last ten years has embodied these qualities and demonstrated their value and effectiveness. If this approach takes hold broadly, it will not only improve the effectiveness of the social sector, but also transform the lives of those families, individuals and communities being served.
For starters, Ms. Long observes, “Over the years, I’ve witnessed evaluation shift from simply being a compliance-focused assessment, based on proving the merit of an investment, to becoming an essential part of early strategy development.” This practice is central to our work. When working with nonprofit service providers, SCV always starts with a logic model, challenging our clients to “start with the end in mind.” This approach to planning program services guides nonprofits in first articulating program goals/objectives (i.e., outcomes/impacts) and then work backwards to identify intermediate outcomes, program outputs (i.e., services), and inputs (i.e., staffing and budget). Using our EV-ROI model, the evaluation capability does not stand alone, nor does it stand above the front-line practitioners; instead it becomes embedded into the culture of their organizations and programs.
Secondly, we offer our clients, real-time, evidence-based markers so that they can better predict whether their programs are likely to achieve their intended outcomes and make course corrections, as necessary. A good example is the 1st Generation EV-ROI evaluation for Hartford Communities That Care’s (HCTC) Mentoring Plus program, serving middle school students. In order to provide HCTC with markers to determine whether their program was likely to increase the graduation rates of their participating students, SCV’s literature search uncovered a recent comprehensive study that identified Early Warning Indicators (EWIs) namely, Attendance, Behavior, and Coursework. SCV used these findings to project the number of Hartford students who were once off-track prior to their program involvement, but who, after program participation, are now on track to graduate from high school.
The final three trends that Ms. Long identified are exemplified in our work with the Richmond, VA Violence Free Zone (VFZ), part of a national model used in urban schools to mentor high-risk youth. Uniquely, VFZ seeks to engage youth leaders in order to not only benefit participating students, but to also improve the school’s culture. Who knew that this program would also have the spin-off benefit of reducing property crime around participating high schools? SCV evaluators first heard anecdotal evidence of this outcome when evaluating the Richmond VFZ and we validated this impression by examining property crime statistics. We have since found this to be the case in multiple cities, including Milwaukee, Washington D.C., Atlanta and Baltimore, to name a few.
We welcome fellow travelers as we seek to help transform the health and human service ecosystem to become increasingly focused on long-term permanent solutions in the lives of our most vulnerable neighbors.