All Publications & Resources
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Grantmaking to School Districts: Lessons for Foundations
This brief offers lessons and best practices from foundations across the country on grantmaking to school districts. It offers advice to foundations that are considering school district investments for the first time. It also offers a useful "check" to more experienced foundations that want to examine their thinking and approaches against the lessons and practices of other foundations.
Current Issue - Scaling Impact
This issue of The Evaluation Exchange explores the promising practices and challenges associated with taking an enterprise to scale, along with the role that evaluation can and should play in that process. It is the second in our “hard-to-measure” series, which we inaugurated with our Spring 2007 issue on evaluating advocacy.
How to Develop a Logic Model for Districtwide Family Engagement Strategies
How to Develop a Logic Model for Districtwide Family Engagement Strategies, a tool from Harvard Family Research Project, guides school districts to create a logic model that can aid in planning, implementing, assessing, and communicating about their systemic family engagement efforts.
A User's Guide to Advocacy Evaluation Planning
A User's Guide to Advocacy Evaluation Planning was developed for advocates, evaluators, and funders who want guidance on how to evaluate advocacy and policy change efforts. This tool takes users through four basic steps that generate the core elements of an advocacy evaluation plan, including what will be measured and how.
Measurement Tools for Evaluating Out-of-School Time Programs: An Evaluation Resource
This Snapshot describes instruments used by current out-of-school time programs to evaluate their implementation and outcomes.
Developing a Parent-Derived Measure of Latino Family Involvement
Christine McWayne and Gigliana Melzi from New York University’s Department of Applied Psychology discuss their investigation of Latino family involvement in early childhood education.
Overcoming Practical Obstacles to Meaningful Program Evaluation: The Booklet Approach
Steven Harvey and Gregory Wood describe how they created a methodology to capture data across a series of parenting workshops.
Cost-Effectiveness and Cost–Benefit Analyses of Family Involvement Initiatives
Brian Yates from American University explains the value of both cost-effectiveness and cost–benefit analyses in promoting investments in family involvement.
Measuring the Implementation and Impact of the Kentucky Family Resource Centers
John Kalafat from Rutgers University describes how he and his colleagues used Innovative Configuration Analysis to evaluate a statewide family resource initiative’s implementation and impact.
A Strategic Evaluation Approach for the Parental Information and Resource Centers
Helen Westmoreland and Suzanne Bouffard describe the evolving evaluation strategy for the national Parental Information and Resource Centers program, the program’s potential to build the family involvement field, and the role of the National PIRC Coordination Center.
The Indiana State PIRC’s Collaborative Evaluation Process
Jerrell Cassady and Jackie Garvey illustrate how an ongoing, collaborative process between director and evaluator has informed and im-proved the Indiana State PIRC’s programs to support family involvement.
Necessity Leads to Innovative Evaluation Approach and Practice
Innovation Network describes their methodological innovation—the intense-period debrief—use to engage advocates in evaluative inquiry shortly after a policy window or intense period of action.
Evaluating Nonprofit Advocacy Simply: An Oxymoron?
Marcia Egbert and Susan Hoechstetter offer nine principles to guide advocacy evaluation, based on a recent and groundbreaking Alliance for Justice tool on this topic.
Strategies for Assessing Policy Change Efforts: A Prospective Approach
Justin Louie and Kendall Guthrie of Blueprint Research and Design outline the steps for advocacy and policy change evaluators to follow in using a prospective approach to evaluation.
Working With Logic Models to Evaluate a Policy and Advocacy Program
Authors from the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco describe how they used both macro-level and individual grantee logic models to drive the evaluation design of the Clinic Consortia Policy and Advocacy Program.
Evaluating an Issue's Position on the Policy Agenda: The Bellwether Methodology
Policy issues need both visibility and momentum to be transformed into political action. Harvard Family Research Project's bellwether methodology helps evaluators assess if both characteristics are emerging.
Discovery Youth: A Museum-Based Program Connecting Youth With Community
Jessica Intrator from the Children's Discovery Museum describes a program that connects youth with a community institution to promote technology skills, health awareness, and positive social and academic outcomes.
Building Connections Between After School Programs and the Business Community
Andy Muñoz of City Year and Glenn Zaccara of T-Mobile talk about how their organizations link OST programs, businesses, and communities to support quality programming for youth.
Connecting Latino Families With Out-of-School Time Opportunities
Nathaniel Riggs describes the implementation and evaluation of the Generación Diez program, which connects Latino families with after school programming, social services, and the school community.
The Peace Drum Project: Intergenerational Connections Through the Arts
Susan Porter, Project Director at Cooperative Artists Institute, describes how the Peace Drum Project makes connections with community members through the arts.
Evaluating BEST Fit: A Program to Promote Child and Family Health After School
Jim Sass and Craig Blumenthal from LA's BEST describe how the BEST Fit initiative links with multiple organizations to support child and family health.
A Conversation With Audrey Hutchinson
Audrey Hutchinson of National League of Cities Institute for Youth, Education, and Families discusses the evaluation of linked after school services by cities.
Using a Data Management Tool to Better Serve Middle School Youth Across a Variety of Settings
Elizabeth Devaney and Hillary Salmons from the Providence After School Alliance describe how a citywide data collection system helps track and improve after school services and strengthen linkages with community organizations, schools, and families.
Community Service by and for Youth: Supporting OST Programs in Seattle
City Year staff member Erika Rasmussen describes how City Year Seattle/King County works with the local school district and with community organizations to offer high-quality OST programming.
Measuring Change: Out-of-School Time Programs and School Culture
Holly Morehouse describes how out-of-school time programs connected to the school day transformed one district's school culture.