The Success Measure team received recent acknowledgment of its evaluation work with the Ford Foundation’s Metropolitan Opportunity Unit (the Unit). A case study of their partnership was selected as one of two case studies presented at a December convening of the prestigious Evaluation Roundtable.
Success Measures was selected as the Unit’s evaluation partner three years ago specifically for its expertise in participatory outcome-focused evaluation. Through a project team led by Jessica Mulcahy and Elsie Achugbue, Success Measures is applying a collaborative evaluation methodology to help the Unit and its grantees assess a $200 million five-year initiative to connect people to economic opportunity, expand access to quality housing, and promote innovative land use in nine metropolitan regions across the country. To date, the Success Measures evaluation team has provided comprehensive custom evaluation and technical assistance services for the first six metro regions funded by the Unit, including Boston, Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New Orleans, and San Francisco-Bay Area, and will continue to expand its work in additional metro areas throughout 2013.
The Evaluation Roundtable, a peer network dedicated to improving evaluation practices across philanthropy, is comprised of evaluation leaders from a variety of private, corporate, community, and family foundations. Maggie Grieve, Jessica Mulcahy and Elsie Achugbue from Success Measures, joined George McCarthy, Director of the Metropolitan Opportunity Unit, as presenters to more than 100 senior evaluation and program executives representing U.S. and international foundations. The conversation provided an opportunity for practice-based, peer-to-peer learning about the effectiveness of the Ford Foundation’s evaluation strategy being implemented by Success Measures, and generated spirited discussion about the sector’s capacity to evaluate its grantmaking strategies.
The complete case study is available at:
http://successmeasures.org/publications/working-toward-collaborative-learning-evaluation-ford-foundation%E2%80%99s-mou-strategy