Evaluation Principles

Our team emphasizes several core aspects in our approach:

Collaboration. Harder+Company works in close partnership with our clients to ensure that project design, coordination, implementation, and deliverables meet their needs and the needs of their communities. We maintain open dialogue throughout each step of the process and adapt plans as needed in the face of changing circumstances. We also promote inclusion and collaboration within our project teams, recognizing each member has a unique perspective that can enhance our collective work.

Serving as thought partners. We approach all our work with a spirit of collaboration and co-investigation. Our work frequently involves strengthening our clients’ and their partners’ capacity to make good use of data. We do this by helping our clients build specific technical skills and developing tools and processes that lead to improved systems within or across organizations. Our goal for every engagement is to leave our clients feeling stronger with more knowledge than when we began working together. During regular meetings, we engage in robust conversations about what we are learning, test hypotheses, and identify opportunities to go deeper in our analyses. This approach builds our collective capacity and confidence to make real-time improvements in our approach.

Empathy and cultural humility. We bring a culturally responsive and equity-focused approach to our engagements. This approach is grounded in empathy and cultural humility, and the recognition that community and organizations are content experts and bring their lived experiences to inform policy and programs. We strive to promote genuine inclusion and collaboration that is respectful of community-specific issues and cultures and supports authentic community engagement. . For every engagement, we constantly check ourselves to make sure our methods, consulting practices, and products are reflective and inclusive of diverse perspectives and help clients address issues of equity, power, voice, and justice.

Understanding of program intent and structure. We work closely with our clients to fully understand funded programs, including the history, philosophy, target population, program objectives, and overall context of their work. Our staff works with programs to identify process and outcome objectives that accurately reflect the program’s ultimate goals, using logic models and/or theories of change to build a foundation for detailed evaluation plans.

Action-oriented analysis and recommendations. We work closely with clients to translate results into recommendations, sharing preliminary data via learning sessions with grantees to ensure the key findings and recommendations reflect their lived experiences. Our team brings strong consulting and facilitation skills to this process, allowing us to make effective use of organizational and group settings for decision-making. We regularly produce evaluation briefs tailored to our clients’ key stakeholders, including policymakers and members of the public at large.