Organizational Research Services > Core Service Areas

Theory of Change and Evaluation Systems Development

Evaluation Projects

Building Evaluation Capacity

Evaluation Projects

What is evaluation?

Evaluation helps organizations “lift the hood” of strategies, initiatives, programs and projects. Just as opening the hood of a car allows you to see how the engine works, evaluation too reveals an essential, fresh perspective into what makes an organization’s work effective.

Evaluation provides insight into:

The impact of the organization’s efforts
How to make improvements
How organizations can hold themselves accountable for results

By applying social science methods to the real world, ORS helps philanthropic organizations, the public sector, and other groups capture systematic data to make sense of what they are trying to achieve.

How we work

We work closely with clients to understand the intended outcomes of their efforts, the purpose for the evaluation, and the best way to collect meaningful information to answer the questions at hand. We use quantitative and qualitative methods, often in combination, to provide depth and context across different methodologies. In all our evaluation projects, we strive to create processes and products that answer key questions and provide findings that are actionable.

ORS offers expertise in the following areas:

Advocacy evaluation: Attention to advocacy investments is on the rise. ORS has found and articulated ways to describe and quantify results along the path to the policy win. We authored “A Guide to Measuring Advocacy and Policy” (commissioned by the Annie E. Casey Foundation). The publication identifies several categories of interim outcomes in this arena. Using this framework, we have conducted a number of advocacy evaluations that have both looked to the past to understand successes and to groups currently engaged in advocacy campaigns to capture the results of ongoing efforts.

Strategic learning evaluation: More and more, organizations want to incorporate evaluation into initiatives mid-stream, so they can more effectively respond to changing circumstances and make decisions using the most up-to-date information . We partner with clients to identify questions, collect data using cutting-edge methods, and share findings that are timely and actionable.

Sample Clients

Public Library Association

Schools Out Washington

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation

United Way of King County

Washington State Child Care Resource and Referral Network

Washington State Department of Health

See Sample Project(s)

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