State of Evaluation in Colorado's Nonprofit Sector

This report presents findings and recommendations from a research project to understand the state of evaluation in Colorado's nonprofit sector. Adopting a national survey conducted by the Innovation Network, a Washington DCbased nonprofit evaluation, research and consulting firm, in addition to a set of in-depth interviews, the following study examined:1. The role of evaluation in nonprofit organizations in Colorado;2. The challenges to implementing evaluation practices; and3. Recommendations to support or enhance evaluation practices

Improving Access to Health Through Collaboration: Lessons Learned from The Colorado Trust's Partnerships for Health Initiative Evaluation

This report presents findings from the evaluation of four Partnerships in Health Initiative grantees that were addressing access to health in their communities through the formation of collaboratives. Outcomes achieved by the grantees as well as lessons learned for others embarking on collaborative processes are described

Trusted Hands: The Role of Community-Based Organizations in Enrolling Children in Public Health Insurance Programs

Trusted Hand is a new approach to enrolling traditionally hard-to-reach children in public health insurance programs. While the most common locations for enrollment assistance are state and local social service agencies and health clinics, many states are increasing their network to include a variety of community-based organizations that typically have not been involved in public health insurance. This Issue Brief, prepared by researchers at the University of Colorado Denver, details the advantages, as well as the challenges of this promising new strategy

From Paper to Practice: Key Lessons for Foundations Deploying Complex Strategies

As the philanthropic field continues to explore ways to increase impact and improve outcomes, more attention has focused on models that prioritize supporting grantee cohorts and collaborative efforts with shared intent over individual grantees and isolated projects. Public policy grantmaking, field-building, collective impact and public willbuilding all offer ready examples of these kinds of complex models and approaches.While each of these models and approaches has their own nuances, they have many commonalities in how they are planned and implemented. This report explores those commonalities through the lens of one foundation's experience in implementing a complex, multi-year public will-building strategy, and what that experience suggests be in place for effective implementation. The findings highlighted in this report are specifically intended for staff of foundations and other organizations interested in learning about the deployment of strategies that rely on building a cohort of established organizations to pursue a shared intent.

Redesign of Good Karma Bike’s Facility Layout and Bike Storage Process

Good Karma Bikes is a non-profit organization that services and restores bikes that customers bring into the shop. Good Karma Bikes has plans for a dramatic increase in storage capacity for the next few years. Good Karma Bike’s warehouse area is currently overflowing with bikes due to the large increase in demand. A redesign of the warehouse layout is needed to handle the increase of incoming bikes and to improve product flow through the space. The project team’s objectives are to: Improve accessibility and reduce time it takes to unrack a bike Increase space utilization by improving bike storage capacity Decrease distance traveled during the process of fixing or stripping down bikes The project team will follow a Gantt chart throughout the duration of the project and use various Industrial Engineering tools to identify how much space is required for the increased demand, how each tool, rack, and workstation within the facility should be laid out, and create a new way to store bikes in a more efficient manner. First, the team observed the flow of bikes through the facility, gathering value added and non-value added processes. In addition, the team tracked the motion of the workers by creating a spaghetti diagram. The dimensions and current layout were taken to create a current state facility model using Microsoft Visio. Next, the project team dived into gathering specific dimensions on the current bike racks to determine how many can be stored on the racks and the amount of square footage the racks take up on the shop floor. The team then used Microsoft Visio as well to create a digital design of the new proposed layout and the alternative layouts, using employee feedback, space requirements, and distance traveled to produce a final recommended layout. For the bike racks, the new design was created in Solidworks to visualize the looks of the rack and the dimensions of the parts before the actual build. From the findings, the group found that the proposed layout will help decrease the amount of square footage consumed by the racks and improve the flow of bikes through the warehouse. The proposed bike rack design increases the rack’s capacity from 6 bikes to 9 bikes while shortening the length of the rack. The total cost of implementing this bike rack will be $60 in material cost and free with labor because the design is simple enough for volunteers to build the racks from scratch. This low-cost bike rack is beneficial to the Good Karma Bikes because this prevents the company from purchasing a mezzanine which would have cost them about$11,000. The new layout and bike storage process will shorten the time to unrack and place bikes onto the racks by a minute per bike, decreasing overall cycle time for bike maintenance. The project team highly recommends this new facility layout and bike rack design if Good Karma Bikes hopes to achieve enough capacity for their projected demand

If You Build It, They Will Come: Creating the Space and Support for Real-Time Strategic Learning

· Learning is a key tool for foundations seeking to improve their effectiveness, and they are beginning to use evaluation to learn about and improve their strategies. The Colorado Trust took this a step further and integrated strategic learning into a grant strategy, including supporting learning coaches for 14 of their grantees. · The strategic learning framework consisted of three steps: systematic data collection, collective interpretation of information, and the use of that interpretation to improve strategies. · This article reviews four of the cases, including three grantees and the foundation as a case, identifying methods of learning and resulting changes in strategies. · Effective strategic learning in real time requires a comprehensive approach where each element of a funding strategy is aligned around the concept of learning and putting learning to use

UAVino

UAVino is a drone solution that uses aerial imagery to determine the overall plant health and water content of vineyards. In general, the system focuses on automating crop inspection by taking aerial imagery of a vineyard, conducting post-processing, and outputting an easily interpreted map of the vineyard\u27s overall health. The project\u27s key innovation is an auto-docking system that allows the drone to automatically return to its launch point and recharge in order to extend mission duration. Long term, UAVino is envisioned as a multi-year, interdisciplinary project involving both the Santa Clara University Robotics Systems Laboratory and local wineries in order to develop a fully functional drone agricultural inspection service

Disordered Fe vacancies and superconductivity in potassium-intercalated iron selenide (K2-xFe4+ySe5)

The parent compound of an unconventional superconductor must contain unusual correlated electronic and magnetic properties of its own. In the high-Tc potassium intercalated FeSe, there has been significant debate regarding what the exact parent compound is. Our studies unambiguously show that the Fe-vacancy ordered K2Fe4Se5 is the magnetic, Mott insulating parent compound of the superconducting state. Non-superconducting K2Fe4Se5 becomes a superconductor after high temperature annealing, and the overall picture indicates that superconductivity in K2-xFe4+ySe5 originates from the Fe-vacancy order to disorder transition. Thus, the long pending question whether magnetic and superconducting state are competing or cooperating for cuprate superconductors may also apply to the Fe-chalcogenide superconductors. It is believed that the iron selenides and related compounds will provide essential information to understand the origin of superconductivity in the iron-based superconductors, and possibly to the superconducting cuprates