Evaluation and Strategy

Foundations, funding collaboratives, and individual donors benefit from an approach to continuous assessment and learning that focuses on meaningful information that they -- and their grantees -- can use.  This approach is tailored to the particular needs of advocates and organizers.

More than 40 national and local funders and 25 grassroots community organizing and advocacy organizations are working more effectively to drive education reform as a result of Catherine's evaluation work with Communities for Public Education Reform, a ground-breaking national collaborative, led in partnership with Blueprint Research & Design.

Other on-going and recent evaluation projects include work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, and the California Endowment.  These projects include creation of funder evaluation tools, development of theories of change for complex initiatives and grant programs, evaluation management, multi-year technical assistance partnerships with grantees, and grantee workshops on the evaluation of advocacy and organizing.

For more information on Catherine's approach to the evaluation of policy and advocacy work, see:

Grassroots Action and Learning for Social Change:  Evaluating Community Organizing (March 2010), written with Justin Louie for the Center for Evaluation Innovation.

The Challenge of Assessing Policy and Advocacy Activities:  Strategies for a Prospective Evaluation Approach (October 2005), written with Kendall Guthrie, Justin Louie, and Tom David (Blueprint Research & Design) for The California Endowment, and
The Challenge of Assessing Policy and Advocacy Activities:  Part II - Moving From Theory to Practice (October 2006), written with Kendall Guthrie and Justin Louie (Blueprint Research & Design) for The California Endowment