Hi there! My name is Kiani. I am an evaluator at Evaluation + Learning Consulting and a Social Welfare PhD student at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). I recently completed an evaluation of an innovative program funded by New York Community Trust (NYCT) and developed by Alexandra Martinez, the Director of Adult Services at Kingsbridge Heights Community Center (KHCC) in the Bronx, NY. This exciting program provides support to bilingual social work students at Lehman College during an academic year; consisting of monthly coaching calls in Spanish, six culturally responsive seminars, and a final presentation.

Hi this is Holly Carmichael Djang and Rocío Bravo of the Monitoring, Evaluation, Research & Learning (MERL) Team at Tilting Futures. Tilting Futures equips young people worldwide to create meaningful impact on global issues. Our Immersive Learning Programs enhance students’ emotional and intellectual skills through collaboration with diverse communities and cultures worldwide. Tilters graduate into our lifelong network with a permanent perspective shift on the world, and what they’re capable of achieving within it.

Titling Futures has recently designed and launched a brand new program, Take Action Lab, informed by research and over a decade of experience. Given that we are an organization dedicated to learning (ours and our students), we knew it would be important to design a method to both capture and apply our learnings as the program was launching.

My name is Molly C. O’Connor, and I am the founder of Coco Canary Consulting, a Creative Evaluation & arts-based methods firm based in St. Paul, MN (the ancestral lands of the Dakota people). In 2023, I completed a Seattle-based Creative Evaluation & Community Engagement project with Sully Moreno, a community engagement specialist from Culture Shift Consulting. I want to share three lessons I learned from this project that I will take with me going forward.

Happy Sunday! I’m Liz DiLuzio and today I’m writing from my roles as adjunct professor at New York University and freelance data analysis instructor. Over the past year, my colleagues and I have begun incorporating ChatGPT into the data analysis workshops we teach in order to provide a learning environment where those interested in exploring AI’s application in data analytics may do so. Observing my participants as they interact with ChatGPT has highlighted for me the necessity for clear guidelines and structured approaches when integrating AI into our evaluation processes. This blog post presents a structured framework for effectively harnessing AI that is inspired by the principles of data-driven decision-making.

Hello fellow evaluators! I am Juliette Mackin from NPC Research in Portland, Oregon, and I have worked as an evaluator for 25 years. I am in this line of work to help people, programs, communities, and systems and am a strong believer in strength-based approaches to programming AND evaluation.

I’m David Keyes, founder of R for the Rest of Us. Over the last five years, I’ve helped thousands of people use R, the tool for data analysis and visualization.  As someone who came from evaluation before focusing on teaching R, I’ve seen how it can improve the work of evaluators, especially when it comes …

LAWG Week: How R Can Help Evaluators Report More Efficiently by David Keyes Read More »

Hello friends! We are Chelsea Ruder, Kim Leonard, and Madeline Brandt, and together we are evaluating the Collective Impact Health Specialist program in the Columbia Gorge, located along the Oregon-Washington border. This program supports community-directed, collaborative projects to improve community health. We are using Ripple Effects Mapping (REM) to understand the intricacies of this work …

LAWG Week: Ripple Effects Mapping in the Columbia River Gorge by Chelsea Ruder, Kim Leonard, and Madeline Brandt Read More »

My name is Kendra Lodewick and I am Principal of Program and Policy Insight, LLC, an applied research and policy consulting firm based in Portland, OR. My projects include a range of methodologies, and I am always seeking ways to better understand and capture the effects of social and economic programs and policies. As evaluator …

LAWG Week: Ripple Effect Mapping as a Means of Capturing Progress in Complex Change by Kendra Lodewick Read More »

Greetings readers – Michelle Helman here, Consultant and PhD Fellow in Peace and Health Innovation at the University for Peace. I am excited to share a couple of everyday evaluation musings and tools that I love and hope you might find useful and inspiring. First, a very short story – I recently worked with a …

LAWG Week: Everyday Evaluation: Demystification and Magic by Michelle Helman Read More »

Hi! I’m Katie Winters, an independent consultant with Insight for Action.  Before all you 90’s kids start singing your own SWEET version of Mr. Jones, read on to learn about Portland’s highly contentious bird situation. As the sun goes down each evening here in Rose City, thousands of crows return from their adventures far and …

LAWG Week: Counting Crows in Portland by Katie Winters Read More »