Check out the video below to see the tremendous work of the First 5 San Diego staff and contractors in improving the lives of children 0-5 in San Diego County. And for the full report, take a look at their website. Plant a seed and watch it grow!

Getting parents engaged with schools has been an important goal in the education field for a long time. But evaluating the impact of parent engagement can still be incredibly complex. Advocacy efforts like FIE evolve over time and can take years to change the culture, improve policies, and move the dial on academic outcomes. Progress is often incremental and can be riddled with set-backs along the way. We focused the evaluation on “interim outcomes” and lessons learned, while taking care to document some unexpected surprises. By gathering the perspectives and experiences of diverse stakeholders—parents, grantees, board members, and educational decision-makers—we were able to shed light on what works and why. Here are just a few of the key practices and takeaways from the FIE initiative:

• Community-based organizations (FIE grantees) played a crucial role in engaging underrepresented communities. Despite lots of challenges, they made major strides engaging, training, and building the confidence of parents as partners and educational advocates. With a keen understanding of their local communities, the grantees helped equip parents with the tools, knowledge and confidence to advocate and participate in decision-making.

• Grantee groups and parents learned to interpret and use data as a tool to build credibility and inform decision-making at the school and district levels. Armed with data and information about models and best practices, parents and grantee organizations forged partnerships and gained respect among educational decision-makers as “informed and credible partners.”

• Through the leadership of Families In Schools (the Los Angeles-based grant-making intermediary), the FIE initiative was characterized by a culture of inquiry, collaboration, and the ability to readily adapt to changing circumstances and opportunities. Quarterly learning institutes became dynamic venues for building capacity and partnerships within and across regions as well as forging stronger alliances with school board members and decision-makers.

These are just a few of the highlights from the new evaluation report being jointly disseminated by the Irvine Foundation, Families In Schools, and Harder+Company. You can find the full report and a handy one-page fact sheet on our publications page—and you can learn more about the initiative and get the full report, one-page summary, or the report’s executive summary at www.irvine.org/FIE.

Just a few months ago, the Foundation Center’s PhilanTopic blog made a powerful argument in favor of core operating support. On the other side of the equation, one of the most thoughtful discussions on the limitations of core operating support remains Paul Brest’s 2008 Annual Report for the Hewlett Foundation. There are smart, well-informed funders and nonprofiteers on both sides of the issue.

While we definitely can’t bring this debate to an end, we can offer some new evidence showing how core operating support works. We recently worked with The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF) to assess the impact of its Core Operating Support funding. TCWF has a long history of providing core operating support to grantees, and with this evaluation it hoped to learn more about the effects of that funding—particularly in light of the recent recession.

The Executive Summary from the report (called Mission Focused Funding: Supporting Nonprofit Sustainability in the Tumult of a Recession) can be found on our publications page. Here are some our key findings:

• TCWF’s Core Operating Support grants covered essential organizational costs for grantees—helping the organizations keep their heads above water in a very tough period for nonprofits.

• The grants also increased organizational capacity, even during the recession, and contributed to increased financial stability and capacity. At a time when nonprofits nationwide were folding, many of these grantees were actually deepening their capacity to serve clients in need.

• TCWF discovered that providing Core Operating Support is not at odds with its programmatic goals. In fact, core operating support helped grantees reach other goals important to TCWF, such as reaching underserved populations and fostering leadership.

We hope to keep working with The California Wellness Foundation to share these findings with the larger field and increase understanding about some of the potential benefits of core operating support. The Executive Summary of this report can be found on our publications page; the full version of the report is on TCWF’s website.

We instantly loved this idea and responded as much in the comments section of the blog:

This challenge prompted a lot of discussion in our offices! At Harder+Company Community Research, we’ve had a formal working group on cultural competence in evaluation since 2003 (and have even presented on it at conferences). So we’re always trying to improve our practice. One thing we hope to do in 2013 is think more deeply about ways to address cultural competence beyond aspects of race/ethnicity and language – i.e., to develop more formal standards for how best to work with other kinds of communities we already reach, like LGBT folks, rural populations, low-income communities, people living with mental illness, etc.

And now, with some further reflection, we think this remains a major priority not only for our own work but also for the evaluation field. Over the years, we have done extensive work to address diversity in its many forms – including the creation of a Culturally Based Evaluation Checklist (which we presented at a conference hosted by The California Wellness Foundation in 2011). We think the next frontier for culturally competent evaluation (and research in general) is a better, more consistent consideration of the layers of identity and culture that so many of our community members possess. In other words, it’s not enough for us to consider just one aspect of culture, such as ethnic background or language. We need to integrate those with other aspects of a person’s identity, such as sexual orientation or age. These facets of identity inform how evaluation questions are asked, analyzed, and reported on.

Thanks to AEA for continuing to push the field forward! We certainly are going to keep advancing our own culturally competent evaluation work in 2013.

• Staff members in our Los Angeles office have donated to local organizations such as the Downtown Women’s Center (a housing and social service agency in Los Angeles), Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, Olive Crest (which works to prevent child abuse and promote strong families), and the Pasadena Education Fund. Donations from that office also look nationally and internationally, with contributions to UNICEF and Habitat for Humanity among others.

• In our Davis office, many team members directed their charity toward community organizations that serve families in need, including Women’s Empowerment in Sacramento, the Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Center in Woodland, Our Family Coalition (which advances the equality and well-being of LGBT families with children),and the Yolo Family Resource Center. National organizations supported by our Davis team this year include the Children’s Defense Fund and the Mosaic Project (an organization that promotes peace by uniting children of diverse backgrounds and providing them with community building skills).

• San Francisco’s staff members have made donations both locally and globally. On the national level, donations included the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Nepal Youth Foundation, and Lambda Legal (which advocates for the rights of LGBT citizens and people living with HIV/AIDS). On the local level, contributions from our SF staff have gone to Mercy Housing, Curry Senior Center, ABADÁ-Capoeira San Francisco, 3rd Street Youth Center, and Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency (an agency that helps homeless families stay healthy and housed).

• Team members from our San Diego office gave to a range of organizations close to their hearts—with a mix of community-focused groups to national and global agencies. Donations went to the American Indian College Fund, the YMCA of San Diego County, Foundation for Change (a community organization that promotes social justice in the San Diego area), Living Coast Discovery Center (an aquarium and nature education center), and KPBS (the local public broadcasting affiliate), among many others.

In addition to these, multiple team members also made contributions to their place of worship, and several staff members have donated to organizations in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and the recent tragic shootings in Newtown, CT.

These are just a selection of the dozens of organizations that our team members supported this year and to which Harder+Company made a matching donation. The list shows the incredible diversity of personal commitments and passions among our staff members—values that carry over to our work every day. It’s a great reminder to me and my Harder+Company colleagues of the spirit of the holidays!

If it seems like you’ve been hearing about a looming crisis in nonprofit leadership for years, it’s because you have. In 2006, the Stanford Social Innovation Review wrote about the impending “leadership deficit.” Annie E. Casey and the Building Movement Project made a splash in 2007 with a report. And you can find smart discussions of it here, here, and plenty of other places.

There may be differing opinions about how big an issue this really is, but most folks agree that the younger generation of nonprofit professionals can benefit from leadership training and support. At Harder+Company, we have worked with a number of clients who are funding or implementing leadership development efforts for the social sector. Here’s what we’ve learned:

• We worked with the Meyer Foundation to assess how its Exponent Awards helped nonprofit executives strengthen their leadership skills. The Awards allow Executive Directors to focus on building relationships with external groups, executive coaching, and retreats for various forms of professional development. These all proved to be valuable to the professional growth of the executives and the advancement of the organization.

• We evaluated Liberty Hill Foundation’s capacity building institute for minority-led and minority serving organizations. We found that, among other things, the use of executive coaches helped grantees assess priorities, stay on track, and translate learning into organizational change. You can find the final report and our 2011 AEA Conference presentation on our website.

• Finally, we recently finished an evaluation of the Next Gen Arts Leadership project, funded jointly by the Irvine and Hewlett Foundations. This program created multiple opportunities for skills building and leadership development among younger arts professionals. While the funders are working on a plan to disseminate findings, here’s one preview we can offer: Many young professionals benefit from being able to tailor training and mentoring opportunities to their particular interests.

I’m very happy to see how funders are taking a more rigorous approach to measuring the effects of their investments. And I look forward to sharing more details from that Next Gen Arts Leadership report!

Maricela first came to Harder+Company in 2003 and spent several years as a Research Assistant in our San Francisco office before heading off to pursue her Master’s of Public Health. She returned to us in 2006 as a Research Associate and since then has contributed to and led a wide range of projects in Northern California and the Central Valley. In addition to her work for clients such as First 5 Fresno, the Center for Employment Training, and Girls Inc., Maricela has been a leading force for our firm’s Culturally Based Consulting workgroup, which serves as an internal resource on best practices for evaluation and planning efforts that reflect the cultural identities and experiences of diverse communities.

Cristina joined us in 2009 as a Research Associate in our San Diego office. She arrived with graduate training in clinical psychology, as well as a rich professional background in applied research on issues of mental health, health disparities, and criminal justice. Since joining the firm, Cristina has worked with a wide range of evaluation and planning clients, including YMCA San Diego, the Gary and Mary West Foundation, and San Diego County Child Welfare Services. Cristina has shown particular leadership in helping the firm deepen its work in the field of child welfare, and she has served as a chair and reviewer for multiple grant review processes for the federal Administration for Children Youth and Families.

Maricela and Cristina both offer strong community research experience, especially in working with diverse Spanish-speaking and Latino communities around California and the country. They join our other Senior Research Associates around the company, including Erika Takada and Raúl Martínez in San Francisco; Loraine Park and Joelle Greene in Los Angeles; and Kristi Koumjian and Katherine Lee in Davis. They also continue to work with our talented Research Associates, Research Assistants, and other team members to provide social impact consulting for our many clients.

• What is the nature of the relationships among funded partners, and to what extent are these agencies collaborating with each other?

• How do funded partners perceive their interactions with each other?

Overall, we found that relationships among partners deepened over the course of four years (2007-2011), suggesting that F5MC’s effort to encourage collaboration has been working. This change is all the more significant given that F5MC’s work began before the Great Recession, which had devastating effects on many service providers in Monterey County. While other factors might be at play, evidence suggests that F5MC’s work has helped build the resilience of the local early childhood development sector and allowed it to weather an economic downturn that hollowed out other sectors in the county.

The final report includes anonymized SNA maps, like the one above, but we were also excited to be able to share detailed, individualized results with each of the F5MC-funded partners to help them understand their role within the network. This allowed organizations to reconsider where they really stood in the community—and how they might be able to strengthen their relationships and improve the delivery of services. In addition, F5MC used the SNA results to think about which partners could potentially play a more central role in the service network, in order to further increase collaboration and resilience of the early childhood development sector as a whole.

Harder+Company has worked with First 5 Monterey for a decade now, and we have a whole host of presentations and reports on their great work. Most recently, Raúl Martínez and Fontane Lo presented at the American Evaluators’ Association Conference on their multi-case study of F5MC’s close-knit network of service providers. You can find their presentation here.

On October 30, Kym will co-present with David Lee, the Executive Director of California Coalition Against Sexual Assault (CalCASA). They’ll talk about our evaluation of PreventConnect, a national, online community of practice for violence prevention professionals. Funded by the Centers for Disease Control, the evaluation looked at how well PreventConnect strengthened the skills and knowledge of violence prevention service providers. Through a web-based survey, video testimonials, and interviews, the evaluation showed that PreventConnect:

• Increased participants’ knowledge of issues related to sexual assault and domestic violence;

• Increased provider confidence in carrying out new violence prevention approaches;

• Increased networking/information sharing and discussions with other people or organizations; and

• Contributed to organizational change by helping users improve policies and procedures related to primary prevention activities.

Our evaluation work will also contribute to two major sessions led by the California Department of Public Health. CDPH will be describing its Health in All Policies Task Force, an effort to bring together people from different sectors to address cross-cutting health issues. Also on October 30, CDPH’s first session will describe the “nuts and bolts” of the project, and the second session will cover the creative strategies that informed the initiative. Our process evaluation of the Task Force’s effort contributed to the Health in All Policies “toolkit” they will be sharing. Details are in the links, but topics include:

• Why is relationship building is essential for success?

• How can health be used as a lens to achieve multiple goals?

• How can a sector build public/private partnerships in support of healthy communities?

As always, conferences are a two-way street where we hope to learn as much as we teach. At APHA, the Harder+Company team will be exploring comprehensive approaches to improving health, with particular attention to quality improvement, planning for accreditation, the work of the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative, and dialogue on the social determinants of health.

In Los Angeles, Harder+Company’s Joelle Greene and Anna Cruz worked with colleagues from Juárez & Associates on the Best Start Implementation Evaluation (iEval), a qualitative study of First 5 LA’s place-based, multi-community effort to support families and children. Because of the need to work with 14 community teams (including residents, CBOs, and other partners), we formed an evaluation team with internal (First 5 LA) and external (Harder+Company and Juárez & Associates) researchers. Using this approach, we:

• Established and maintained buy-in from agency staff, who were the main gatekeepers to the Best Start Community Partnerships. The internal team used their already-established relationships with colleagues throughout the agency, while the external team brought credibility and objectivity to build faith in the process.

• Disseminated sensitive findings in a way that was well-received by agency staff and community members. The internal team helped navigate the agency’s complex politics from the inside, while the external team was able to place findings in the context of similar issues faced by other programs.

In Monterey County, Fontane Lo and Raúl Martínez faced a different set of challenges in their multi-case study of First 5 Monterey’s technical assistance program for child care centers. Because First 5 Monterey works in a number of rural communities with a tight network of providers, confidentiality was an important concern. To address this, Fontane and Raúl created a reporting strategy that provided program improvement tools to individual centers in the study and accountability tools to First 5 staff. In the process, they uncovered a few tips for dealing with a sensitive evaluation:

• Reports are tools for conversation. A little background research on who needs to be part of which conversation goes a long way.

• Depending who you are, there is such a thing as too much information–when information is sensitive, this is particularly true.

• Relationships with community partners are not worth jeopardizing for the sake of making a point.

Interested in learning more? Visit Joelle and Anna at their poster session on October 24, and check out Fontane and Raul’s presentation October 27 with David Dobrowski of First 5 Monterey—and read their abstracts on our own AEA 2012 summary page.