Evaluating Program Impact: Our Approach to Performance Assessment

Discerning and communicating the impact of grantmaking and other programmatic contributions are essential to fulfilling the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's (RBF) mission as well as our commitment to stewardship, transparency, and accountability. The Fund's board and staff have found that engaging policymakers on the results and insights gained from our grantmaking, informing the public about our grantees' work, and attracting additional donors to promising institutions and approaches are key activities that help build a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world.In order to bring additional rigor to the Fund's approach to program impact assessment, a committee of RBF trustees and staff was established in March 2012. Based on our experience, the state of evaluation in philanthropy, and a review of literature and activity in the field, the Impact Assessment Committee developed a set of principles to guide our impact assessment approach, defined terms for the purposes of RBF discussions, established several points for evaluation activities in the life cycle of a grantmaking program, and identified opportunities to embed impact assessment in the Fund's regular institutional processes. The Fund establishes its programs in fields and places that reflect its mission and the evolution of its longstanding interests, along with an analysis of the changing global context. The key elements of the RBF's approach to assessing program impact are as follows:* The board approves program guidelines that lay the foundation for the Fund's grantmaking within a program. Guidelines include a preamble that presents the vision and rationale for each program, ambitious long-term goals, and strategies that articulate specific actions the Fund will support to achieve progress toward these goals. They provide guidance to staff and grantseekers about what the RBF is prepared to fund.* A program framework summary, derived from the guidelines, is developed for internal use and includes indicators of progress. These indicators identify anticipated changes in understanding, behavior, capacity, public engagement, or public policy that would demonstrate that program strategies are contributing to realizing program goals.* Within each program, evaluation activities occur on an ongoing basis. Monitoring of the field and of individual grants draws on regular staff engagement and grantee reporting; program reviews, conducted every three to five years by program staff, provide an opportunity to engage the board in a strategic review of progress—often resulting in updated program strategies; impact assessments are conducted by external consultants after five or more years as strategies mature.* The annual institutional calendar provides a variety of opportunities for the board and staff to discuss and review programmatic impact at different points each year and across several years.This approach to impact assessment reflects emerging practices in the field and is consistent with the Fund's values and grantmaking approaches. The committee believes that the approach effectively supports program learning, guides program development, and enhances the impact of the Fund's grantmaking

Quantization of Field Theories in the Presence of Boundaries

This paper reviews the progress made over the last five years in studying boundary conditions and semiclassical properties of quantum fields about 4-real-dimensional Riemannian backgrounds. For massless spin-${1\over 2}$ fields one has a choice of spectral or supersymmetric boundary conditions, and the corresponding conformal anomalies have been evaluated by using zeta-function regularization. For Euclidean Maxwell theory in vacuum, the mode-by-mode analysis of BRST-covariant Faddeev-Popov amplitudes has been performed for relativistic and non-relativistic gauge conditions. For massless spin-${3\over 2}$ fields, the contribution of physical degrees of freedom to one-loop amplitudes, and the 2-spinor analysis of Dirac and Rarita-Schwinger potentials, have been obtained. In linearized gravity, gauge modes and ghost modes in the de Donder gauge have been studied in detail. This program may lead to a deeper understanding of different quantization techniques for gauge fields and gravitation, to a new vision of gauge invariance, and to new points of view in twistor theory.Comment: 11 pages, plain-tex, to appear in Proceedings of the XI Italian Conference on General Relativity and Gravitational Physics, Trieste (Italy), September 26-30, 1994; 1995 World Scientific Publishing Compan

The Stress Distribution on the Zygapophyseal Joint of Lumbar Vertebra by ANSYS Program

Zygapophyseal joints (or facet joints), are a plane synovial joint which located between the articular facet processes of the vertebral arch which is freely guided movable joints. Ten dried vertebrae were used for the lumbar region and taking (L4) as a sample to reveal stress pathways across the joints by using ANSYS program under different loading conditions which used Finite Elements Analysis model. Results obtained from the ANSYS program are important in understanding the boundary conditions for load analysis and the points of stress concentration which explained from the anatomical point of view and linked to muscle and ligament attachments. This model used as a computational tool to joint biomechanics and to prosthetic implant analysis

Program for the Analysis of Plane Trusses

The ‘TRAP - TRuss Analysis Program’ can assist engineers in the analysis of plane truss-type structures, as well as prove an excellent basis for understanding the “finite – element” method. The Program is completely menu-driven, with all nodes, elements, and load data entered through an input file. TRAP includes plotting for displaying the truss geometry in its original shape showing all nodes and support points. In the analysis process, firstly the structure data; e.g number of nodes, elements, materials and supports are to be defined. Secondly, element properties and support constraints have to be specified. Finally, nodal global loads are then defined. The program output include; displacements for each node, axial forces, length of each element and reactions at the supports. The program aims at reducing the time of analysis and increase the accuracy of calculations as well as storage of the analysed data. The program caters for manual methods of truss analysis such as method of sections or joint method. It has been found that the program is efficient and has no limitations on the number of nodes and elements. The program is suitable for use by design engineers in analysing Plane – Trusses of any size

Diffusion of microfinance in development: the role of U.S. philanthropic foundations

This repository item contains a single issue of Issues in Brief, a series of policy briefs that began publishing in 2008 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.Microfinance programs that provide small loans to poor people engaging in income-generating activities is a common means of supporting international development and poverty alleviation efforts. In this Issues in Brief, Emily Bryant, a Boston University doctoral candidate in Sociology and 2015 Pardee Center Graduate Summer Fellow, explores the role that U.S. philanthropic foundations played in helping to create the organizational infrastructure that allowed for the diffusion of such programs. Her first-of-its-kind analysis looks at the amount and type of support that various sizes and kinds of U.S. foundations devoted to microfinance over time, and finds that the early support of older, wealthier foundations paved the way for microfinance to become a new type of poverty alleviation program starting in the late 1970s. “Understanding what characterizes foundations and their support sheds light on the diffusion of international development strategies and points to how NGO workers and development practitioners might harness foundations’ capacity for institutional entrepreneurship,” Bryant writes. Emily Bryant is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Boston University, where she was 2015 Pardee Center Graduate Summer Fellow. Her work has focused on international criminal tribunals as well as U.S. philanthropic support for international microfinance. Her dissertation examines the decision-making practices of American foundations engaged in international grantmaking

Application of Design of Experiments to Flight Test: a Case Study

Modern flight test tends to be a complex, expensive undertaking so any increases in efficiency would result in considerable savings. Design of experiments is a statistical methodology which enables a highly efficient investigation where only the samples needed are collected and analyzed. the application of design of experiments to the design of flight test can result in a significant increase in test efficiency. Increased information is garnered from the data collected while the number of data points required to understand the system is reduced. in this effort, an actual flight test program serves as a case study to compare and contrast five different designs to explore the flight test envelope: the classic subject-matter-expert (SME) generated survey method, the SME-generated points augmented to a relatively fine mesh orthogonal analysis of variance design, an axial central composite design (CCD), a face-centered CCD plus simplex design, and a Simpson-Landman embedded face-centered CCD. the axial CCD is further expanded by a single point to illustrate the flexibility of the design in response to the interests of the test team. the case study data are analyzed using each designed experiment, and the results are compared and contrasted as a cost-benefit relationship between flight test resources expended (i.e. flight hours) and system understanding gained (i.e. statistical confidence and power). the design of experiments methodologies, as applied to this case study, generally show a 50 to 80 percent reduction in flight test resources expended to gain similar levels of understanding of the system under test. These savings can be applied to other programs, used to educate design changes before testing an improved system, allow for flexible investigation into areas of interest to the test team, or replicate the test points resulting in a better understanding of systemic error. in an era of restricted budgets and timelines, careful design and thoughtful analysis of flight test experiments can make the difference between a failed or cancelled flight test program and the successful fielding of a needed capability

Youth and Community Development through Rites of Passage: A Pilot Evaluation Model

This project presents a pilot program evaluation model for measuring the effectiveness of rites of passage strategies for youth and community development. It begins by clarifying the key elements and meaning of modern day, community-based rites of passage experiences for youth transitioning into and through adolescence. An effective rite of passage for adolescence is an intentional and transformative process that increases the youth’s community status while supporting and challenging youth to adopt attitudes, behaviors, and skills for a healthy transition through this developmental period and beyond. Next, the project applies a systems-based program evaluation model (Wasserman, 2010) to a rite of passage strategy in order to measure the effects of this experience on both youth and community members. A review of the relevant literature focuses on the current understanding and application of rites of passage experiences for youth and community development, the challenges in defining and measuring this bidirectional process, and the application of Self-Determination Theory to the program evaluation model with the goal of improving the capacity to measure locally meaningful outcomes. The pilot model provides a method for measuring the often assumed, yet key, bidirectional interactions and relationships in effective rites of passage processes. Guided by the application of select pulse points, the model introduces research questions as starting points for stakeholders to measure the effectiveness of these strategies in relation to the program outcome: Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction in relation to authority. A discussion of data collection and analysis, possible results and implications for the research questions, limitations, and future directions follows

Cooking and Active Leisure TAS Program, Spain: A Program Impact Pathways (PIP) analysis

Background. The “Cooking and Active Leisure” Tu y Alícia por la Salud (CAL-TAS) Program is a schoolbased pilot that addresses healthy lifestyle needs of Spanish secondary school students with initiatives that research has proven to improve dietary and physical activity behaviors. Objective. The objectives were to perform a Program Impact Pathways (PIP) analysis to describe key activities and processes of the CAL-TAS Program, identify Critical Quality Control Points (CCPs), and identify a suite of common indicators of healthy lifestyles to be applied across participant schools. Methods. The CAL-TAS Program designers and implementation team developed this PIP analysis through an iterative process and presented the results for feedback at the seven-country Healthy Lifestyles Program Evaluation Workshop held in Granada, Spain, 13–14 September 2013, under the auspices of the Mondelēz International Foundation. Results. The team identified three PIP CCPs: teachers’ motivation and training, changes in students’ knowledge of healthy lifestyles, and changes in students’ healthy lifestyle behavior. The selected indicators of the program’s impact on healthy lifestyles are adequacy of food intake, level of knowledge of healthy lifestyles gained, and adequacy of physical activity level according to World Health Organization recommendations. A clear definition of impact indicators, as well as collection of accurate data on healthy lifestyle behaviors and knowledge, is essential to understanding the effectiveness of this program before it can be scaled up. Conclusions. CAL-TAS is an effective secondary school-based program encouraging healthy lifestyles. The PIP analysis was instrumental in identifying CCPs to sustain and improve the quality of the program. The team hopes to sustain and improve the program through these program evaluation recommendations