Advancing Culturally Responsive Evaluations for Boys and Men of Color

The field of culturally responsive evaluations (CRE) and comprehensive efforts to improve outcomes for boys and men of color (BMOC) are in their infancy. Yet attention to the development of the knowledge base and expansion of practice is needed due to the groundswell of interest in both areas in recent years. For instance, in 2014, President Obama established the My Brother's Keeper (MBK) Task Force. MBK is a coordinated federal effort with private philanthropic organizations and communities to address persistent opportunity gaps faced by BMOC and to ensure that all young people can reach their full potential. While BMOCs are the targets of many social programs and interventions, a dearth of high-quality culturally responsive evaluations exist on the effectiveness of various gender- and population-specific approaches for BMOCs to achieve measurable results

Strengthening Cultural Competency in California's Domestic Violence Field for High-Need, Underserved Populations

In 2012, The Blue Shield of California Foundation (BSCF)'s program area Blue Shield Against Violence (BSAV) launched a project called "Strengthening Cultural Competency in California's Domestic Violence Field for High-Need, Underserved Populations" (BSAV CC) to support and promote promising culturally competent practices within the domestic violence field. BSCF enlisted RDP Consulting (RDP) to manage the $2.6 million initiative and to provide capacitybuilding services, and provided two-year grants to 17 community partners across the state of California. The BSAV CC Project specifically sought to support domestic violence-related outreach to Tribal communities, African Americans, and recent immigrant populations.Social Policy Research Associates (SPR) received a grant from BSCF to support the learning and evaluation of this project. Over the two years of the evaluation, SPR conducted 78 phone interviews with community partners, RDP consultants, project-level evaluators, and field leaders. SPR also conducted one-day visits to 11 programs—visits that included interviews with executive directors, board members, outreach staff, key program partners, and clients. Finally, SPR attended project convenings and events, reviewed project documentation (e.g., proposals, reports), and administered two rounds of a social networking survey to all community partners. This Final Report highlights the outcomes of the two-year evaluation, at both the organizational and field levels

Lessons From the Assessment for Learning Project: Strategies for Building an Authentic Learning Community

This article explores findings from an evaluation of the Assessment for Learning Project, a grantee engagement strategy led by the Center for Innovation in Education focused on creating a learning community founded in continuous reflection and safety for risk-taking. The article shares the project’s model and approach, grounded in the core design elements of a field-facing learning agenda, grantmaking that leads with learning, and collective leadership. This article highlights the Assessment for Learning Project’s practices, such as a Request for Learning rather than traditional Request for Proposals; a requirement that grantees provide formative feedback to each other; and public demonstrations of learning in lieu of traditional reporting. And it explores how the project’s design helps flip the script on expertise by encouraging grantees to draw on one another for support and how it promotes a culture of experimentation that deepens learning relationships. Finally, this article points to the role of the project’s leadership team in modeling reflection and vulnerability, co-designing with grantees to bolster their leadership, and expanding its network by strategically connecting grantees to the broader field via a common learning agenda

Building Capacity Through a Regranting Strategy: Promising Approaches and Emerging Outcomes

This is an evaluation report on the Community Leadership Project (CLP) in which 27 well-established intermediary organizations--community foundations, grantmaking public charities, and funder affinity groups--regrant to smaller organizations to provide financial support and tailored organizational assistance and coaching to small to mid-size organizations; technical assistance; and leadership development.The evaluation is interested in understanding not only the impact of CLP on leaders, organizations, intermediaries, and foundation partners, but also the key lessons on: (1) reaching and providing capacity-building supports to organizations and leaders serving low-income communities and communities of color; (2) characteristics of effective, culturally relevant, and community-responsive capacity building; and (3) which kinds of capacity-building supports are most effective for small and mid-sized organizations serving low-income communities and communitiesof color

Student-Centered Learning: City Arts and Technology High School

This case study is one of four written by SCOPE about student-centered practices in schools. The case studies address the following questions:1. What are the effects of student-centered learning approaches on student engagement, achievement of knowledge and skills, and attainment (high school graduation, college admission, and college continuation and success), in particular for underserved students?2. What specific practices, approaches, and contextual factors result in these outcomes?The cases focus on the structures, practices, and conditions in the four schools that enable students to experience positive outcomes and consider the ways in which these factors are interrelated and work to reinforce each other