| Session Title: Challenging Urban Education Philanthropy: Lessons Learned From the Development and Pilot Testing of Evaluation Tools for a Large Community Foundation |
| Multipaper Session 270 to be held in Mineral Hall Section E on Thursday, Nov 6, 10:55 AM to 12:25 PM |
| Sponsored by the Non-profit and Foundations Evaluation TIG |
| Chair(s): |
| Steven Kimball, University of Wisconsin Madison, skimball@wisc.edu |
| Abstract: This session reports on results from the pilot testing of evaluation guidelines and reporting tools from the comprehensive evaluation of education grant-making by The Chicago Community Trust. Prior evaluation work uncovered the need for more uniform evaluation guidelines to help grantees tailor projects to the foundation's priorities, and help the foundation assess the impact of their diverse grant activities. In the absence of such tools, the individual grantees funded by the Trust produced reports of varying quality that were challenging to synthesize and from which to discern lessons learned. The tools were designed to apply to multiple organizations with projects at different lifecycle stages and to yield both process and findings uses. Three papers report on the context of the evaluation, the design of the evaluation guidelines and tools, and results from the pilot test. Presenters include the external evaluators, foundation program officers, and a grant program leader. |
| Rising to the Challenge: Rethinking Evaluation to Build Capacity for Education Reform |
| Gudelia Lopez, Chicago Community Trust, glopez@cct.org |
| Peggy Mueller, Chicago Community Trust, pmueller@cct.org |
| In 2002, The Chicago Community Trust embarked on a five-year, $55 million Education Initiative with two main goals: 1) develop high performing schools and professional networks of educators to support rigorous instruction that reduces the achievement gap; and 2) increase the number of high quality alternative educational opportunities for students in the Chicago community. The Education Initiative established three priority areas to focus grant making: literacy, professional development, and alternative models of schools. This presentation by the program officers will provide context on the Trust's education program (including new priorities and foci for the next five years), how evaluation has been used to inform its main projects in the past, and how the current evaluation guidelines pilot project may help the Trust create uniform frameworks for evaluation that are informative not only for the foundation but also for grant recipients. |
| The Design and Testing of Evaluation Tools to Inform Foundation Education Reforms and Build Capacity of Grant Recipient Organizations |
| Steven Kimball, University of Wisconsin Madison, skimball@wisc.edu |
| Chris Thorn, University of Wisconsin Madison, cathorn@wisc.edu |
| Rachel Lander, University of Wisconsin Madison, rlander@wisc.edu |
| Katie Davis, University of Wisconsin Madison, kdavis3@wisc.edu |
| This presentation reviews the evaluation guidelines development process and results from the pilot study conducted by the external evaluation team. Over the course of the 3-year evaluation, the evaluation team worked with program officers to develop a set of user-friendly guidelines based on a conception of project lifecycle and the CIPP evaluation model (Stufflebeam et al., 2000) for future grant recipients to use to inform and direct their evaluation activities. The guidelines and tools were refined using research on the broader context of foundations and evaluation, interviews with a small sample of foundations across the United States and two Trust grant recipients, as well as discussions and feedback from Trust program officers and Chicago-area evaluators. This presentation highlights key findings from the foundation interviews, reviews the evaluation guidelines, summarizes feedback provided on the guidelines and resulting changes, and reports on pilot study findings. |
| Joining School Needs With Foundation Priorities: Perspectives on Evaluation Guidelines and Tools from a Grant Recipient |
| Rebecca Lindsay Ryan, Big Shoulders Fund, rlindsayryan@bigshouldersfund.org |
| The final presentation provides the grant recipient organization's perspective on the pilot project. The Big Shoulders Fund provides financial, school development, and curriculum support to 93 inner-city schools serving over 25,000 students within the Archdiocese of Chicago. Although larger than many school districts, they lack access to professional development staff and resources typical of public schools. BSF administers grant awards from the Trust to its member schools in multiple areas, from teacher training to developing management skills of principals. The BSF has been refining its own evaluation strategy, but has had limited capacity to assist schools with evaluations of their programs. In addition to describing how the tools worked for its sub-grantees, this session will include reflections on process use related to organizational learning, and findings use involving potential changes in future proposals and evaluation reports from BSF to the Trust and other major foundations and from member schools to BSF. |