Learning for Action’s (LFA’s) Cohort-Based Capacity Building (CBCB) engagements bring together leaders from social sector organizations to strengthen their ability to build and sustain strategies, systems, tools and practices that facilitate learning. Geared toward both sharpening skills and shifting cultures, CBCBs leverage a three-pronged approach to equip participants with what they need for data-driven strategies and to action long-term habits.

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This tool is for funders who are invested in supporting leaders and organizations and are committed to centering racial equity.

This tool provides a menu of practices to help funders move from the “what” of racial equity grantmaking principles to the “how” of those principles. It also provides reflection questions to guide funders of capacity building as we believe that equity-centered learning requires continual self-reflection, analysis, and accountability, along with action.

Not all questions and practices will likely be resonant at any given moment in time, but we invite you to identify which are most relevant right now and keep coming back to this tool as your work evolves and grows

In 2018, twelve youth-serving nonprofits in California joined the third cohort of PropelNext to strengthen their program designs and build their capacity for data use and learning. The concluding years of the three-year program would be marked by unprecedented crisis and upheaval, from a global pandemic to national racial reckoning. Throughout this time, PropelNext not only provided foundational support to strengthen organizational performance but also helped grantees build resilience to weather internal and external crises. This report highlights key results and insights about the facilitators, barriers, and nuances of building a learning organization, even in the most challenging of times. Download the full report here.

Since 2012, PropelNext has worked with 40 youth development organizations across three cohorts to sharpen their program models, develop theories of change (TOCs), implement performance measurement and management systems, and cultivate cultures of learning and continuous improvement that deliver better outcomes for youth. Through the three-year program, PropelNext provides grantees a range of supports including unrestricted funding, customized coaching, peer learning sessions, and an online learning community. Over the years, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and Learning for Action have worked to bring justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) to the foreground of this work and push organizational thinking and practice in new and potentially transformative directions. The focus and momentum to center JEDI principles has sharpened and accelerated since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid rise of the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd and so many others.

Drawing from conversations with PropelNext grantees, coaches, and the team that designed and led the initiative, this learning brief takes a closer look at how PropelNext has incorporated JEDI into its practices and programming over time. It also spotlights examples of how participating organizations from the Northern California 2021 cohort are applying and operationalizing these principles and frameworks as part of their learning and equity journeys. Download the full report here.

The Working to Institutionalize Sex Education (WISE) California partner, Cardea, has scaled its district reach in the state by implementing Comprehensive Sex Ed (CSE) Networks. CSE networks are a county-based collaborative approach. In 2018, LFA developed a case study to highlight the CSE network approach and how it has contributed to advancing sex ed among participating districts. The case study is designed to highlight the successes of the WISE CA CSE networks and to elevate a potential model for other counties across the country that are seeking to enhance sex ed in their school. Download the Case Study

Trauma Transformed, the result of seven Bay Area counties’ collective mission to work together to change the way they understand, respond to and heal trauma, was seeded by a four-year federal systems change grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). LFA partnered with Trauma Transformed to tell the story of its first four years. A systems change initiative like Trauma Transformed is inherently slow moving, complex, and difficult to measure. Looking back upon the work of the last four years, there is evidence that meaningful progress is taking place: radical transformation in the capacity of systems to support and sustain efforts and practices that address trauma, by supporting and healing the people within those organizations and systems. Download the Final Report and the Executive Summary.

LFA developed an online diagnostic tool, the Nonprofit Capacity Organizational Diagnostic (N-COD) tool for nonprofits to self-assess their progress on the seven core dimensions of nonprofit capacity, with a vision and impact model as the foundation for driving nonprofit effectiveness. LFA piloted the tool with 54 nonprofits in Solano County to assist First 5 Solano and Solano Health and Social Services in learning about the current landscape of nonprofit organizational capacity in the county. Download the Report and learn more in our blog post.

CoreAlign seeks to build the leadership and collaboration needed to advance the reproductive health, rights, and justice (RHRJ) movement by training individuals, groups, and teams to be more innovative and address issues of race and power. In 2016, CoreAlign engaged LFA to conduct an evaluation of their program to assess (1) the extent to which they are effectively achieving their outcomes, (2) the needs in the movement in the midst of a rapidly changing political climate, and (3) CoreAlign’s role in further developing movement leaders to address those needs. “Developing Leaders to Advance the Movement” gives a brief overview of LFA’s evaluation findings, describes how CoreAlign contributes to developing leaders in the movement, and highlights where there are opportunities to strengthen its contributions and further advance the movement. Download the Report.

The Data Matters Framework outlines a set of critical components that schools must have in place to meaningfully engage in data reflection and learning. These are the building blocks for data use in schools - the capacities and structures that educators need to effectively use data to advance learning and practice. LFA developed the framework through our work with Marin Community Foundation’s Early School Success grant.

We offer this framework as a tool that educators can use to strengthen their data use practices. We also offer this as a tool for evaluators who are working with schools and looking for language that can support discussions with clients by illuminating what we mean - specifically and on the ground - when we talk about data use. Download the Framework. Learn more about this tool on our blog post here.

LFA has developed a distilled, simplified framework for collaborative performance that is customizable, enables self-diagnosis, and creates a roadmap for identifying and making the changes needed to support strong performance. We offer a one-page framework: while complexity is inherent in collaboration and must be respected, it is also important to make collaboration as simple as possible by distilling collaboration to a few simple, core principles to help make performance monitoring more manageable. Download the Matrix. Learn more about this tool and how to use it by reading our blog post here.

The Working to Institutionalize Sex Education (WISE) Initiative is a privately funded effort to support public school districts to advance and sustain comprehensive sexuality education programs. LFA has served as the national evaluator for the WISE Initiative since 2009, providing ongoing guidance to the multi-funder collaborative in designing and implementing an evaluation to explore how, and to what degree, sex education is becoming institutionalized in WISE school districts. This new article, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, shares WISE’s successes in increasing access to sex education, removing barriers, and highlighting best practices. Download the Article.

In designing an implementation evaluation for the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation’s middle school program, Connecting for Success (CFS), LFA looked to ideas from the school reform literature to build out the concept of strategic coherence, a concept that captures a particularly important aspect of implementation (one that our evaluation found to be among the most meaningful factors relating to the program’s success): School reforms are strategically coherent when they are logically consistent with other initiatives or programs, and with existing practices. When reforms cohere, the various policies and practices build on, complement, and reinforce one another; without coherence, the various policies and practices contradict one another and contribute to the fractured time and attention of school staff. Separate efforts may be based on conflicting strategies, and contradictory demands may be made of staff.

For those in the field who might want to explore the concept of strategic coherence as a critical aspect of high-quality program implementation, we offer a rubric that outlines the three dimensions of strategic coherence as well as a tool that includes items to measure these dimensions. Download the Rubric and Tool. Learn more about strategic coherence in our blog post here.

HIKI NŌ (the Hawaiian phrase for “Can Do”) is a PBS Hawai'i Learning Initiative that mentors middle and high school students throughout the state of Hawai'i as they learn about all aspects of broadcast journalism and create PBS-quality video stories about themselves and their communities. Under their teachers’ guidance, students from 90 public, private, and charter schools from across the Hawaiian Islands learn critical 21st century skills and share stories from their communities to Hawai'i and the world. PBS Hawaii engaged Learning for Action to conduct an evaluation to explore HIKI NŌ's impact on teacher instructional practice and activities, specifically looking at the extent to which the program helps teachers to meet Common Core requirements and helps students to build 21st Century skills. Findings from the evaluation highlight that HIKI NŌ is a unique program offering valuable opportunities for teacher professional development and student skill development which extend beyond the HIKI NŌ classroom.Download the Final Report.

LFA has developed a series of considerations – summarized in checklist format – as one tool to help us, and our partners, incorporate an equity lens into evaluation work. The checklists (1) Encourage us to be intentional and proactive about authentically representing multiple perspectives, and (2) Pose critical questions designed to challenge our biases and illuminate where we can be more inclusive and culturally responsive. The checklist series is organized into eight parts, which align to critical junctures in the evaluation process. Download the Checklist Overview, as well the eight individual checklists: Project Design, Evaluation Project Launch, Evaluation Plan & Timeline Development, Evaluation Project Mid-Point Check-In, Theory of Change & Logic Model Development, Instrument Development & Data Collection, Data Interpretation & Analysis, Reporting & Presenting Findings.

What are effective practices in data use among school teams engaging in a preschool through third grade initiative? What structures and systems must be in place to support effective data use? These are key questions driving a study of data use implementation among schools participating in the Marin Community Foundation's Early School Success Initiative. In collaboration with MCF and the Marin County Office of Education, LFA explored these questions through extensive literature review, conversations with data use stakeholders, and observation of data meetings in action at each of the participating schools. The culminating findings include a framework outlining the critical components and structures that support effective data use in schools, a detailed summary of each of the critical components, and specific examples where we see these promising practices taking shape at schools in the Early School Success Initiative. Download the Report

Rockwood Leadership Institute builds the leadership and collaboration needed to advance social movements, cultivate and grow leadership, build social sector fields, and foster deep, strategic, and effective collaboration through its leadership programs. Rockwood engaged LFA in 2016 to evaluate their cohort-based leadership development programs. LFA partnered with Rockwood to collect qualitative and quantitative data from leadership development funders and Rockwood alumni. The engagement included the development of an evaluation plan, designing survey and interview protocols, data collection and analysis, and the creation of an outcomes evaluation report based on a survey of over 100 alums, a case study detailing how Rockwood’s Fellowship for a New California contributed to a major policy win, and a cluster study of 15 alums from different sectors. The evaluation demonstrates Rockwood’s contributions to changes in individual leaders and movement-level “wins,” and also provides recommendations to Rockwood to enhance their programmatic offerings. The summary shown here illustrates the key findings across the three evaluation reports. Download the Cross-Cutting Summary or access the full set of Reports and Executive Summaries on Rockwood's website.

LFA and the Center for Venture Philanthropy developed this benchmarking tool to help organizational leaders and staff assess and reflect on their practices relative to standards of excellence in environmental education. Download the Tool

In 2015, a group of funders gathered to better understand the availability of quality capacity building services for the nonprofit sector in the Chicago area. They convened a Steering Committee and established an initiative called Point the Way, the long-term goal of which is to unite and coordinate efforts to improve capacity building in Chicago. The Steering Committee hired LFA to conduct a study on nonprofit capacity building needs and services in the greater Chicago area and beyond, and the experiences of those that use, deliver, and invest in them. Over the course of the study, over 400 nonprofits, capacity building providers, and funders provided input on the capacity building supports needed by individual nonprofits and shared their perspective on the ecosystem of capacity building in Chicago. The study incorporates a review of the latest literature on capacity building best practices and trends, and explores three model capacity building programs to understand why they’re successful and what lessons they can offer to consumers and providers of, and investors in, capacity building in the greater Chicago area. The report culminates with recommendations on how Chicago-area nonprofits, funders, and capacity building providers can work together to strengthen supports for nonprofits. Download the Final Report.

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With support from the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, LFA developed the Better Results Toolkit in partnership with a set of San Francisco Bay Area environmental education organizations that participated in a three-year capacity-building initiative called LEAPS (Leadership and Evaluation for Program Success). The toolkit guides organizations through the process of putting strong data-driven learning practices in place.

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This 2015 case study richly describes United We Dream Network's remarkable journey in coalescing and accelerating the progress of the immigrant youth movement. We tell UWDN’s story using a visually engaging SlideDoc format – a combination of written narrative, graphics, and images – which consists of four main modules: 1) UWDN’s journey at a glance, 2) UWDN’s impact, 3) reflections on UWDN’s path forward, and 4) reflections for funders. As the learning and evaluation partner for Unbound Philanthropy, LFA developed this case study for multiple audiences: UWDN as it takes stock of what has been achieved and charts its path ahead, Unbound Philanthropy as it supports UWDN and lives out its “theory of philanthropy,” and other funders who wish to advance movement-building and immigrant rights. To develop this case study, LFA engaged in an array of methods, integrating data from interviews with over 30 individuals, insights from more than 20 documents, and statistics collected by UWDN. Download the Executive Summary or the Full Case Study. 

Please note that the Full Case Study PDF contains bookmarks so that you can jump to different modules and sub-sections. Once you have downloaded the PDF, click on the bookmark icon on the top right to see a list of the five main case study modules.

#PopJustice is a six-volume report series directed and produced by Liz Manne Strategy and funded by Unbound Philanthropy and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. The series of reports – intended for funders, advocates, and entertainment industry insiders – explores the promise of population culture strategies in advancing social justice goals. The research confirms that popular culture can be an effective instrument for positive social change, and leveraged in the effort to improve attitudes toward immigrants and people of color. As the learning and evaluation partner for Unbound Philanthropy, LFA developed the Executive Brief that launched the release of the full #PopJustice series. Download the Executive Brief or see the full Six-Volume Report Series.

The Center for Effective Philanthropy, a long-time partner of LFA, offers a number of assessment tools that provide critical insights into what is working and what could be improved about the funder-grantee relationship. The widely used Grantee Perception Report (GPR) provides funders with candid, actionable feedback from grantees using an online survey. The complementary Applicant Perception Report (APR) is a shorter survey designed to gather feedback from a funder’s declined applicants. To date, hundreds of funders have used the GPR, allowing CEP to compile an impressive dataset that funders can use for relevant benchmarking of their results. Learn more about the GPR and APR.

Global Glimpse works to inspire a new generation of young Americans to become responsible global citizens. Global Glimpse engaged LFA to evaluate their current program performance, and to strengthen their internal evaluation systems and capacity with an eye for scalability as Global Glimpse grows. LFA revised Global Glimpse’s theory of change to align better with the program’s outcome goals, and revised and administered surveys of multiple program stakeholder groups to assess the program’s alignment with the framework. LFA improved Global Glimpse’s evaluation capacity by transferring the revised surveys to Global Glimpse for future internal administration, and improved Global Glimpse’s ability to align future evaluation results with their theory of change. LFA developed an evaluation report of the program’s 2015 results, with a focus on providing context about the successes and areas for improvement for the organization’s internal use. Global Glimpse used the newly available theory of change outcomes and these evaluation data to create their 2015 Impact Report. Download the Evaluation Report or Global Glimpse’s Internal Impact Report.

In partnership with Mathematica Policy Research, LFA developed a learning brief for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Quality Innovation Challenge (QIC). The QIC, an initiative of the Foundation’s Population and Reproductive Health program, encourages new research and innovative ideas for improving service delivery, engaging communities, and increasing provider accountability in the reproductive health field. In 2013, the Foundation awarded grants to nine grantees around the world to improve the quality of reproductive health care. LFA and Mathematica developed grantee profiles for each of the awardees. Additionally, we developed a learning brief that synthesizes the achievements, challenges, and lessons learned from QIC grantees to provide insight into what does and does not work in quality improvement. The learning brief offers lessons from the QIC work on how to encourage innovation in the future.  Download the Learning Brief and Grantee Profiles.

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The Working to Institutionalize Sex Ed (WISE) Initiative provides much needed support to institutionalize sex education in public schools across 12 key states. As the national evaluator for the WISE Initiative, LFA has provided ongoing guidance to a multi-funder collaborative led by the Grove Foundation and supported by the Ford Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Oak Hill Fund, and additional funders. One product of the evaluation is the creation of the WISE Toolkit, an iterative, dynamic approach to implementing sex education. The WISE Toolkit emerged from the experience of the organizations participating in WISE and was captured, analyzed, and written by LFA. See the Online Toolkit

Kaiser Permanente Northern California Region-Community Benefit Programs (KPCBP)’s Youth and Trauma-Informed Care grant program (YTIC) is a critical strategy for addressing community violence by focusing on prevention as well as healing. KPCBP engaged LFA to conduct a formative evaluation of the YTIC grants program. The LFA evaluation team collected qualitative data from each of the 20 YTIC grantees through site visits and in-depth interviews, as well as gathered process data to track youth participation and service use. The evaluation surfaced key findings that have informed KPCBP’s grantmaking strategy for addressing youth violence and trauma, and contributes to the growing body of knowledge in the field of trauma-informed care. Download the Report

Together with the SF Human Rights Commission and the SF LGBT Community Center, Learning for Action has released a Violence Prevention Needs Assessment detailing how members of the LGBTQI community perceive and experience violence and the availability of resources. Commissioned in light of highly publicized attacks against the community, the assessment is meant to inform both local and national decision makers. Download the Report 

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LFA launched an engagement with First 5 LA in March 2014 to develop its next strategic plan.  The plan is built on a robust foundation of data, analysis, consultation with the community and First 5 LA stakeholders, and deliberation among the Commission and staff. The strategies presented in the plan provide a road map for increasing First 5 LA's contribution to improving conditions for families, the communities they live in, and the systems that support them. Download the Strategic Plan

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Since 2011, LFA has partnered with the Marin Community Foundation (MCF) to evaluate MCF's Early School Success Initiative, an ambitious 5+ year investment to develop a preschool through third grade (PreK-3) model in Marin County, designed to bridge the divide between early learning and K-12.

As part of the evaluation, LFA developed a set of learning briefs, exploring in depth four key topics at the heart of Marin County's efforts to develop a PreK-3 model: professional development for teachers and administrators, building partnerships between PreK and K-12, family engagement, and kindergarten readiness. Each brief outlines a framework on the key components for effective implementation of efforts in that area, based on both existing literature and what has been shown to succeed in Marin. Download the individual briefs: Professional Development, Preschool Partnerships, Family Engagement, and Kindergarten Readiness.

As we seek to actively participate in and evaluate systems change initiatives, we need a conceptual framework that supports a clear, shared sense of just what it is we are all talking about when we say “system” or “systems change.” LFA has developed A Practical Guide to Assessing Systems Change to address these issues. It offers a framework and a set of tools to help evaluators operationalize systems change concepts, and set up an approach to evaluate systems change initiatives. Download the Report 

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Organizations in the social sector are increasingly venturing into new ways to tackle the social, economic, and environmental challenges of our day. More nonprofits, foundations, and public agencies are especially looking to systems change and to social innovation as they develop their strategies. Developmental evaluation is gaining momentum as an evaluation approach designed to help cope with complexity, capture emergent learnings, and support actors to reflect on learnings and use them in service of ongoing strategy development.

LFA has put together this short Guide to outline some ways that its consultant teams approach this type of work. The Guide is not a toolkit or a recipe; instead it simply lays out LFA’s current thinking on how to design evaluations that have a significant developmental component. Download the Guide

The First 5 Sonoma County Commission funds an array of programs, services, and initiatives designed to achieve its Strategic Plan goals in the areas of health and healthy development, early childhood education, parent support and education, and school readiness. LFA has served as First 5 Sonoma County's local evaluator since 2004, helping First 5 staff and grantees to evaluate the impact of their programs and build capacity to conduct their own evaluation. 

The First 5 Sonoma County Annual Impact Report is a comprehensive summary of the impact of First 5’s efforts in the past fiscal year, incorporating findings from program- and systems-level evaluation data. This report provides an overview of populations served as a result of First 5 grant making, as well as the ways in which First 5 has contributed to capacity-building and direct outcomes for children and families in Sonoma County. Download the Executive Summary or the Full Report.

READ Global partners with communities to establish community library and resource centers in rural villages in Nepal, India, and Bhutan, providing villagers with access to books, newspapers, publications, and information technology that they could not otherwise access. To understand the impact of READ Centers in these communities, READ worked with LFA to develop a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework, and then field test the evaluation in select READ Centers in all three countries—five Centers in Nepal, four in India, and two in Bhutan. Download the Executive Summary or the Full Report.

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LFA has developed this toolkit for organizations wishing to track their advocacy activities and impact. It is geared to direct service organizations which also conduct advocacy activities, and may also be useful to advocacy organizations new to evaluation. The emphasis is on taking steps that do not require a great deal of effort, and which capitalize on the inside knowledge that advocates have of their own work. It contains tips and guidance on identifying evaluation questions, tracking activities, articulating and measuring interim outcomes, and using findings to inform advocacy strategy. Download the Toolkit

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the James S. and John L. Knight Foundation are committed to helping their media partners assess the impact and results of their work in order to remain competitive in the field and make data-driven decisions. As part of this effort, the Gates Foundation engaged LFA to plan, facilitate, and document a series of convenings in December 2011 and 2012 to inform the development of a framework for measuring the impact and engagement of media work. This framework is designed to assist media funders and grantees in understanding their audiences and their behavior, and to more effectively assess the impact and results of their work. Download the Report

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At the core of The California Endowment’s (TCE) work is their Health Happens Here strategy. Health Happens in Neighborhoods, in Schools, and with Prevention – and Health Happens with All Our Sons and Brothers. TCE sponsored a case study of school discipline reform in California, and engaged Nancy Latham (LFA’s Chief Learning Officer) and two other consultants (Tia Martinez and Arnold Chandler) to research and write the study. The case study tells the story of how community and youth organizers, public interest lawyers, and statewide advocates came together to support school discipline reform. In a remarkably short period of time during 2011 and 2012, this issue went from the fringes to the center of policy debate – with ten bills introduced, seven passed, and five ultimately signed into law. These new policies are an important milestone in the effort to back away from overly punitive “zero tolerance” school discipline that fuels high drop-out rates among young people of color. These policies will make it easier for schools to support and educate, rather than marginalize, our sons and brothers. Download the Report

The National Center for Media Engagement (NCME) commissioned this paper to establish a better understanding of public media’s current practices and possible paths forward for assessing impact. NCME enlisted LFA to conduct an environmental scan designed to identify and understand tools available to help public media organizations measure the impact, and demonstrate the value, of their work. Specifically, NCME asked LFA to (1) Determine if there are common impact measurement frameworks in use in public media; (2) Inventory currently available impact measurement tools and frameworks; (3) Document promising practices for measuring public media impact; and (4) Develop recommendations for increasing the effectiveness and usefulness of impact measurement in public media organizations. Download the Report

The Knight News Challenge is a five-year media innovation contest designed to reward new ideas for gathering, sharing and using local news and information. Knight Foundation launched the contest in September 2006, at a time when the news industry was in great flux, as part of an effort to encourage greater experimentation in the field of journalism and media. To date, Knight Foundation has pledged nearly $22 million to four sets of annual contest winners in the search for bold community news and media experiments. LFA conducted an interim assessment and produced a cross-cutting evaluation report as well as a series of seven cluster reports on different groups of 2007-2008 winners. Download the Report, or the individual cluster reports: Field Building, Mobile Platforms, Innovative Tools, Citizen Media, Local News, News Games, and Public Media.

The LGBT Health and Human Services Network engaged LFA to conduct a comprehensive mapping project to identify key opportunities and gaps in LGBTQ health and human services and funding in California. The study involved an extensive literature review and a survey of over 50 organizations providing health and human services to LGBTQ communities in California. The research results show a very thin safety net in some geographic regions, LGBTQ communities, and services. Overall, the health and human services needs of LGBTQ communities in California are largely unmet and require additional support and funding to ensure that these communities have access to quality health and human services. Download the Executive Summary

LFA collaborated with the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) to develop a national survey of community colleges (the survey was funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies). This survey was designed to assess the progress of community colleges in offering programming for students 50 and older. Of those that responded (204 out of all 1,174 community colleges nationwide), 84% reported having such programs (either in academics and enrichment, workforce training and career development, or volunteering). However, most colleges simply take existing offerings and market them to this demographic. Colleges still have a long way to go in truly customizing programming to this important age group. Download the Full Report or the Executive Summary

From 2007-2015, LFA worked with the Plus 50 Initiative at the American Association of Community Colleges. The Plus 50 Initiative designed a new program that community colleges can implement to support students 50 and older to complete a college credential and advance their careers. LFA and Plus 50 developed a program manual that community colleges can use to replicate a Plus 50 program on their own campus. The manual guides colleges through five phases of program design and implementation: readiness, needs assessment, program development, implementation planning, and continuous improvement. Download the Manual

Stanford Social Innovation Review published this case study written by Steven LaFrance (LFA's Founder and CEO) and Nancy Latham (LFA's Chief Learning Officer) on a capacity-building initiative designed to advance the field of environmental education provided in Silicon Valley. Download the Full Article

You know your program makes a difference. But how do you show it? Evaluation can equip you with the information you need to demonstrate the success of your program. LFA's evaluation handbook provides tools and practical steps you need to define and measure success for your program, initiative, or organization, helping you to tell your own compelling, data-driven story about the change you create in the world. Download the Handbook

This article provides a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture that show up in our organizations. Download the article.

This study outlines six categories of demeaning and invalidating messages reflecting beliefs of White supremacy that are unintentionally conveyed by perpetrators. Download the Article.

NCRP’s self-assessment toolkit provides a comprehensive selection of guides and resources to help you determine how well you are building, sharing, and wielding power, as well as identify ways to transform your programs and operations for lasting, equitable impact. Check out NCRP’s Toolkit.

Racial Equity Tools is a website offering tools, research, curricula, and ideas to support individuals and groups working to achieve racial equity. The Transforming White Privilege (TWP) curriculum is designed to help current and emerging leaders from a variety of sectors better identify, talk about, and intervene to address white privilege and its consequences.

GrantCraft, in partnership with the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity (PRE), developed this guide which offers grantmakers advice on promoting and deepening their foundation’s commitment to racial equity. Download the Guide.

Funders for LGBTQ Issues offers this set of frameworks and approaches for understanding racial inequities in policies, programs, and grantmaking. Download the Frameworks.

This report from Equity in the Center, a project of ProInspire, argues that deep social impact is possible within the context of a Race Equity Culture — one that is focused on actions designed to dismantle structural racism and inequities existing both inside and outside of an organization. Download the Report.

A description of our cohort-based capacity-building services, including an overview of our capacity-building approach. We meet organizations where they are and craft a tailored set of activities to help nonprofits, foundations, and government agencies better measure their impact and manage their course to mission fulfillment. Download the Overview.

Leading Edge produced this toolkit for nonprofit volunteer leaders conducting an executive search, drawing on best practices in the field. Download the Guide.

Leading Edge produced this guide for onboarding new staff, providing an overview of best practices and templates designed to be customized for individual organizations. Download the Guide.

ORS developed this guide to promote shared learning in the field of leadership development evaluation. The guide is designed with both evaluators and funders in mind. Download the Guide.

Northern California Grantmakers engaged LFA to conduct a study exploring the impact of the 2017 Northern California fires on the arts community. The study tells the story of impact on both individual artists and arts organizations in the counties most affected by the fires - Sonoma, Napa, and Mendocino - as well as what it will take to support the recovery of a thriving arts community. Download the Report.

In this Foundation Review article, Barbara Masters and Torie Osborn describe how foundations can support movement building, identifying five core elements: organizing an authentic base; leadership; vision and ideas; alliances; and advocacy infrastructure. They also offer a useful framework for evaluating movement building. Download the Article.

Manuel Pastor and Rhonda Ortiz provide guidance to funders and the field at large by detailing what makes for successful social movements, what capacities need to be developed, and what funding opportunities might exist. Download the Article.

With the long-term goal of enhancing philanthropic understanding and support of social movements, Innovation Network’s Social Movement Learning Project team undertook research to better understand the barriers and challenges to social movement funding. This paper provides an overview of the findings from an extensive literature review and conversations with over 40 funders, movement-builders, and evaluators. Download the Executive Summary.

At the 2017 American Evaluation Association Conference, Innovation Network shared what they are learning about evaluating social movements, including: what they know about social movements, their components, characteristics, and types; what aspects of social movements are ripe for evaluation; and what existing evaluation approaches are well suited to evaluating social movements. View the Presentation.

The Upstream Investments Policy Initiative is a collective impact initiative chartered by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors in response to concerns over escalating costs in the local criminal justice system. From 2015 to 2016, LFA served as the evaluation and learning partner for the Upstream Initiative, which seeks to reduce downstream criminal justice costs and enhance community outcomes by shifting the focus of policies, funding, and programming toward upstream investments in evidence-based and evidence-informed prevention and early intervention programs and services. The evaluation provided insights into factors that facilitate or impede progress toward the initiative's goals and vision, guiding planning and implementation of ongoing efforts to advance the initiative. Download the Final Report.

ORS Impact and Spark Policy Institute completed a rigorous study to understand when and how collective impact contributes to systems and population change. Looking across 25 initiatives working on different focus areas, the study looks at the contribution and outcomes of collective impact, the design and implementation of the collective impact approach, with a specific deep-dive into equity. The study also lifts up implications from the study as well as considerations for different audiences. Download the Full Report or the Executive Summary.

In LFA’s work with First 5 Sonoma County and the Sonoma County Upstream Investments Policy Initiative, we developed a fidelity diagnostic tool that is designed to assess both fidelity of and adaptations to implementation. The tool enables staff to assess the extent to which a program is being implemented according to the model’s specifications (adherence, dosage, quality, and responsiveness). To measure fidelity using the diagnostic tool involves a three-step process: (1) Calculate a “fidelity score,” (2) Assess acceptability of program model adaptations, and (3) Consider what actions need to be taken to address implementation issues. Download the Tool.

How should nonprofits begin thinking about bringing on dedicated evaluation and learning (E&L) staff? Nonprofit leaders understand that collecting and analyzing data in the service of learning is mission-critical. At the same time, many make do with program staff taking on the technical tasks of data analysis and reporting. This brief provides useful learning and practical guidance from 10 years and 30+ nonprofits in the PropelNext initiative regarding how, when, in what role(s), and at what levels of compensation this group of nonprofits staffed up their E&L functions.

Download the full report here.

Read the blog post written by Steven LaFrance about this resource.