Do you find it
difficult to understand and communicate the contribution of your organization's work as a
whole, even though you can describe each piece in detail?
Many programs enjoy a strong evaluation. Funders, community partners and universities collaborate
to carefully investigate the effects of an intervention on participants. These evaluations
provide a rich description of a few interventions or programs. These evaluations however
only address one part of an overall initiative.
The Mary Black Foundation funds a variety of community partners each implementing different strategies.
Some are providing essential services, others are advocating for broader systems and policy change
while others are changing the physical design of the community to promote health. It is the
Foundation's assumption that multiple strategies are needed at multiple levels to achieve
improvement in community-level health.
The Foundation cannot rely on a few isolated evaluations to understand the impact of the overall initiative.
CSG helped the Mary Black Foundation create an initiative level evaluation that incorporated all of the
strategies and partners the Foundation might fund. This system allows the Foundation to explore what
contribution they are making to community level health outcomes through their funding. CSG's
initiative level or "foundation focused" evaluation approaches can be powerful leadership
tools for foundations or anyone else that promotes multiple strategies at multiple levels
in an effort to improve community health.
