Areas of Practice

Program evaluation: We support the full cycle of program evaluation using a wide-variety of methods and frameworks. The methods we’re most aligned with include culturally responsive evaluation, equity evaluation, and utilization-focused evaluation.

Applied Research: Program evaluation and applied research are on a spectrum and there is quite a bit of overlap. However, at EEG we see a project as moving into applied research when there are questions about how generalizable a programs impacts are to the broader population or seeking to understand if the community being served, reflects a broader community hoping to be reached.

Facilitation: Facilitation is key to all aspects of program evaluation and applied research. At EEG, we are trained ToP (Technology of Participation) facilitator and utilize a wide-range of techniques from Art of Hosting, ToP, participatory techniques adapted from other fields and areas, including Liberating Structures and Trauma-Informed Facilitation.

Thought Leadership: We have a wide range of expertise of social programs, including understanding living systems (including families), internal organizational change (change management), and content- expertise related to education, behavioral health, data informed program development, and Policy, Systems, and Environment change.

Strategic Planning: Strategic planning is both a process and an outcome. It is both what you do and what you plan to do and as such, good strategic planning is not a product but an evolving system, with robust feedback loops and iterative decision making.

Data Equity: At EEG, our interpretation of data equity is that the way data is collected, how data is collected, and the use of collected data is in as much service of the grand vision of a program as the programming itself.

Data Systems and Infrastructure: In our experience, many programs want research and evaluation support and yet what first needs to be in place are data systems and infrastructure that are clean, clear, simple, with maximum utility and minimal “wasted data”.

We can help you ask questions about how your program is built, whether your program is achieving the goals you have, and how to develop a full stack program evaluation system that allows you to make data-informed decisions from development to sunsetting.

We can support the development, implementation, analysis, and dissemination of findings (both for academic and community audiences) of applied-research projects. This includes helping to answer the following questions:

  1. How do we take a program from evidence-informed to evidence-based and what does that even mean?

  2. How do we take an evidence-based program and adapt it for our specific audience?

  3. How do we look to the broader literature and field for what to consider when building an evidence-informed program with our intended goals and impacts?

We can help you develop and implement well-facilitated, experiential learning opportunities for your team and your partners that don’t feel like every other boring meeting. These are opportunities to learn together, where you are getting the information you need, in way that is reciprocal, meaningful, and fun for everyone giving their time to attend.

We can meet with your team and provide insight into the development and implementation of your program, internally and externally. We can be a point of support for continued reflection, growth, and change towards greater impact, given what is known (and not known) currently in the larger field of knowledge.

We will help you use an Emergent Learning Framework for supporting the systems and processes of robust strategic planning that creates actual change and not a series of static (rarely consulted) documents.

We can help you collect data that feels affirming and useful to participants, build data systems that do not replicate racist and unjust policies and procedures, and collect data is communicated in ways that allow everyone to have a seat at the table of sense-making and ownership. Idealistic? Perhaps. Possible? Absolutely.

We can help you build a well-designed system of documentation of program in activities, in order to move ahead with program evaluation and applied research. At EEG we can help build clean and simple documentation systems that will allow your program to take its next steps in asking more robust questions. But the first question to be able to answer for a program is “What is my program and how are we doing it?” And we can help you do that.