What’s New at BTW informing change — Summer 2007

BTW Work Cited in the New York Times
While the trend toward greater accountability among foundations may seem recent, BTW has been helping philanthropic organizations think critically about how they do their work for many years. The practice of reflective evaluation is a particularly dynamic technique, which uses information about past performance to inform subsequent practice and planning.
 
A recent article in The New York Times, Foundations Find Benefits in Facing Up to Failures, cites a 2003 report in which SeaChange, an underperforming organization funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, closes. The article references the work of an “independent evaluator” whose findings provided valuable insights into what went wrong and why. That “independent evaluator” was BTW informing change, and the SeaChange report, Building an Organization to Last, was the culmination of a reflective evaluation process that involved organizational leaders, key observers and the funding community. The evaluation was conducted on behalf of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, who astutely sought a grantee post-mortem to identify missteps and corollary opportunities for improvements that could be applied to other grantmaking endeavors.
 
BTW is committed to the art and science of reflective practice. We use our own organization as a laboratory to generate, test, adopt and adapt new approaches to reflective practice and organizational learning. We do this in myriad ways, including always setting aside time to debrief our projects and products, so that we can learn from our experiences and bring those insights to our clients.
 
For questions about BTW services, email Ellen Irie.

New Projects New Partners
We approach our work with clients as a partnership in which both parties are equally committed to a quality process and productive engagement. We are pleased to announce our newest clients:
 
The Getty Foundation
BTW is evaluating the Getty Foundation’s Multicultural Undergraduate Internship (MUI) program to determine the extent to which the program influenced the career path of program participants. The MUI program was founded in 1993 to increase the diversity of professionals in the arts. During the evaluation process, BTW will partner with MUI program stakeholders to clarify the program's theory of change, develop evaluation tools, survey all past program graduates, conduct interviews and focus groups with intern supervisors and group leaders, and develop data tracking systems that will allow the foundation to collect meaningful data on the career trajectory of program participants.
 
Henry M. Jackson Foundation
BTW is preparing a publication for the Henry M. Jackson Foundation of Seattle on the characteristics of successful public service and political leadership, based on the life and influence of the late Senator Henry M. Jackson, who served in the United States Congress for 42 years. This publication will be issued in early 2008, with the intent to stimulate a national conversation about public service leadership.

Thought Leaders
Kim Ammann Howard, Director of Evaluation and Organizational Learning at BTW, presented at the May 2007 GEO conference on organizational learning in philanthropy. Her presentation summoned participants to design and implement learning communities that are of mutual and maximum benefit to both grantees and grantmakers. Kim’s related article, Designing Learning Communities for Enhanced Impact, offers practical guidance by identifying the benefits to grantmakers of participating in learning communities and design elements that foster bilateral reflection and learning.

New Staff
We welcome two new staff members to the BTW team.

BTW Associate Sara Lepore Dube brings expertise in conducting quantitative and qualitative research and evaluation for both nonprofit and public sector clients. Her work with service-learning, after-school and early education programs has focused on collecting and analyzing data to inform improvements in programmatic quality. Sara also has considerable direct service experience; she managed the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s volunteer program and led an AmeriCorps national service team that worked with Head Start children's programs. Sara holds a Masters in Public Policy from the Goldman School at the University of California, Berkeley.

Whether working on issues of economic development, education or sustainable communities, new BTW Associate Sheila Nickolopoulos has been particularly interested in how the strategic and organizational methods of the public, private and nonprofit sectors can support and influence one another. Sheila has been involved in both the technical and tactical aspects of evaluations, collecting and analysing data and identifying strategies for foundation investments and programmatic refinements for a range of organizations including NOVA, a Silicon Valley workforce development agency; the Greenbelt Alliance; and several museums, including San Francisco’s Exploratorium. Sheila holds a Masters from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

What’s New Archive