Using Evaluation to Improve Grantmaking: What's Good for the Goose is Good for the Grantor

Over the past decade, evaluation has become an increasingly prominent (albeit vexing) function within philanthropy. More and more foundations are beginning to devote at least minimal levels of resources to evaluate the programs they fund. The topic of evaluation appears more and more at professional conferences. Membership in Grantmakers Evaluation Network -- an "affinity group" of foundation representatives interested in promoting evaluation -- has mushroomed to over 400. As the "demand" for evaluation has increased among foundations, the market has begun to fill up with a mixed bag of consultants (from both academia and the private sector) willing to supply their services. Particularly this last indicator suggests that evaluation will take root in the philanthropic sector. Yet, although evaluation is becoming a more popular activity among foundations, its potential is far from being realized

Nuclear Waste and Native America: The MRS Siting Exercise

Drs. Gowda & Easterling provide cross-cultural perspectives on issues of risk perception, equity and policy as they affect nuclear waste storage on Native American sites

Promoting Community Leadership Among Community Foundations: The Role of the Social Capital Benchmark Survey

· Faced with increased competition for donors and calls for measurable impact, many community foundations (CFs) are adopting a more proactive, strategic approach to philanthropy – one that has come to be known as community leadership. · Community leadership has proven challenging for many CFs. In theory, community assessment is a useful tool allowing CFs to identify strategic issues where leadership activities are warranted. This article examines the effect of a large, coordinated assessment project, the 2000 Social Capital Benchmark Survey (SCBS), conducted by Robert Putnam and the Saguaro Seminar at Harvard University. · Of the 34 CFs that participated in SCBS, 12 participated in the National Social Capital Learning Circle from 2006-2007. Transcripts and materials generated through monthly conference calls were analyzed to assess the CFs\u27 community-leadership work and to determine the role of SCBS. · SCBS supported community leadership work by providing data that served as a platform for communitywide conversations, by pointing to strategic issues, and by providing objective evidence to justify the choice of issues. · For CFs willing and able to serve as a community leader, a community assessment can serve as a useful point of departure for stepping first into facilitative leadership and later into more directive leadership

The Colorado Trust’s Healthy Communities Initiative: Results and Lessons for Comprehensive Community Initiatives

· This article summarizes how 29 diverse communities throughout Colorado implemented the Colorado Healthy Communities Initiative (CHCI), which was conceived and funded by The Colorado Trust to engage community residents in the development of locally relevant strategies to improve community health. · In line with the World Health Organization’s Healthy Cities model, CHCI emphasized (a) inclusive, representative planning; (b) a broad definition of “health”; (c) consensus decision making; and (d) capacity building among local stakeholder groups. · Communities implemented an array of projects (on average, six per community) that extended well beyond traditional health promotion and disease prevention. The most common action projects focused on community problem solving, civic engagement, and youth development. Many of the grantees established projects or new institutions that had a long-term community impact. · Key success factors for CHCI included (a) a wellspecified planning model, (b) a planning process facilitated by expert consultants, (c) a unifying “healthy community” vision developed at the beginning of the process by diverse stakeholders, (d) a willingness by stakeholders to work collaboratively to define “key performance areas” and then to implement “action projects” to achieve them, and (e) an appropriate level of funding for implementation ($50,000 per site per year). · The outcomes and impacts of CHCI might have been improved by better anticipating the requirements for sustaining the energy and work initiated during the planning process. · At the end of the initiative, CHCI provided the funders with a broader, deeper understanding of the requirements, opportunities, and realities associated with promoting “community health.

Evaluation of Free to Grow: Head Start Partnerships to Promote Substance-Free Communities

Free to Grow: Head Start Partnerships to Promote Substance-free Communities (FTG) was a national initiative in which local Head Start (HS) agencies, in partnership with other community organizations, implemented a mix of evidence-based family-strengthening and community-strengthening strategies. The evaluation of FTG used a quasi-experimental design to compare 14 communities that participated in the FTG intervention with 14 matched comparison communities. Telephone surveys were conducted with two cohorts of the primary caregivers of children in HS at baseline and then annually for 2 years. The survey was also administered to repeated cross-sectional samples of primary caregivers of young children who were not enrolled in HS. No consistent evidence was found in changes in family functioning or neighborhood conditions when the 14 FTG sites were compared to 14 matched sites. However, caregivers of young children who were not in HS in three high-implementing FTG sites showed evidence of improvements in neighborhood organization, neighborhood norms against substance abuse, and child disciplinary practices. Results provide highly limited support for the concept that family and neighborhood conditions that are likely to affect child development and well-being can be changed through organized efforts implemented by local HS programs.community intervention; substance abuse; community partnerships; evaluation

Real-time multi-model decadal climate predictions

We present the first climate prediction of the coming decade made with multiple models, initialized with prior observations. This prediction accrues from an international activity to exchange decadal predictions in near real-time, in order to assess differences and similarities, provide a consensus view to prevent over-confidence in forecasts from any single model, and establish current collective capability. We stress that the forecast is experimental, since the skill of the multi-model system is as yet unknown. Nevertheless, the forecast systems used here are based on models that have undergone rigorous evaluation and individually have been evaluated for forecast skill. Moreover, it is important to publish forecasts to enable open evaluation, and to provide a focus on climate change in the coming decade. Initialized forecasts of the year 2011 agree well with observations, with a pattern correlation of 0.62 compared to 0.31 for uninitialized projections. In particular, the forecast correctly predicted La Niña in the Pacific, and warm conditions in the north Atlantic and USA. A similar pattern is predicted for 2012 but with a weaker La Niña. Indices of Atlantic multi-decadal variability and Pacific decadal variability show no signal beyond climatology after 2015, while temperature in the Niño3 region is predicted to warm slightly by about 0.5 °C over the coming decade. However, uncertainties are large for individual years and initialization has little impact beyond the first 4 years in most regions. Relative to uninitialized forecasts, initialized forecasts are significantly warmer in the north Atlantic sub-polar gyre and cooler in the north Pacific throughout the decade. They are also significantly cooler in the global average and over most land and ocean regions out to several years ahead. However, in the absence of volcanic eruptions, global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record. Verification of these forecasts will provide an important opportunity to test the performance of models and our understanding and knowledge of the drivers of climate change