Program Evaluation

A Little Help

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A Little Help‘s mission is to help older adults thrive by connecting neighbors across generations.

A Little Help (ALH) is looking to connect with DU faculty and students on the following projects:

  • Research Design: What does it take to get younger volunteers (20 – 30 year olds) involved with ALH and sustain their participation? Currently we have a hard time retaining young volunteers. Many of them sign-up to volunteer, go through the required background check, but communication drops from there.
  • Information Dissemination: We need help reaching younger audiences (20 – 30 year olds) to recruit as volunteers. How can we use social media to market our organization and recruit volunteers? How can we reach and engage college students?
  • Information Dissemination: We would like someone to review our website and marketing materials and make recommendations to improve our messaging for a diversity of audiences. We have a wide demographic of potential volunteers but we are not sure what works and does not work for them when viewing and using our website/materials.
  • Program Evaluation: We would like to have students look at ALH’s process in how we intake applications, match folks etc. If possible, we would like someone to assess our Help Connect online system. Is the system and process working well for volunteers? Can we be doing something better?
  • Program Evaluation/Creative Work: We want help assessing our volunteer orientation process and training video. We want to collect feedback from our volunteers to learn what questions they need help answering and what methods of teaching/communication work best for them. How can we improve our orientation and training processes (e.g. have a weekly open house for volunteers to chat and ask questions)? What is the best way to get our training out there and encourage interaction among volunteers?

Girls Inc. of Metro Denver

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The mission of Girls Inc. is to inspire girls to be strong, smart, and bold. The vision of Girls Inc. of Metro Denver (GIMD) is a world in which every girl values her whole self, discovers her inner strengths, and achieves her goals.

GIMD is looking to connect with DU faculty and students on the following projects :

  • Research Design: We are open to discussing and developing a research project with faculty and students provided alignment of interests is mutually beneficial.
  • Program Evaluation (MATCHED): Faculty/student researcher would work closely with the Director of Training, Evaluation, and Advocacy to assess:
    • Is our method of staff/volunteer training successful? What are our gaps and opportunities for improvement?
    • What are the impacts of our engagement with the community? How can we better partner with the community to share our programs and support theirs?
    • Evaluation of middle school tutoring program
  • Curriculum Development: We are beginning to launch a more formalized advocacy program (advocating for the issues relevant to our girls on multiple levels) and would like help in understanding how to approach this.
  • Internship: We are looking for students who would like to serve as dedicated mentors to the girls in our after school programs (AY 2019 – 2020) and summer programs (2020).

Generation Exchange

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Generation Exchange‘s mission is to make technology easier, more accessible, and empowering for older adults through the one-on-pairing with student mentors in workshops. We also strive to create meaningful experiences for our mentors as they benefit from the wisdom and experience of their older counterparts. 

Generation Exchange is looking to connect with DU faculty and students on the following projects:

  • Internship: Work with Generation Exchange to design and implement a free pilot workshop at DU where older adult (40+) mentees are paired with DU student volunteer mentors to learn about technology of interest. From this pilot, we would like to explore potential for creating a DU Chapter that sustains free technology workshops through the year. 
  • Program Evaluation: We would like to improve our understanding of mentee needs and better inspire knowledge exchange between mentees and mentors. Some questions we want to explore include:  
    • How can we enhance our Mentees self-assessment of which tech questions they will explore with their Mentors?  We wish to evaluate this approach in order to discover if we and they are missing additional fruitful areas of exploration because they “don’t know what they don’t know”.
    • We’d like to evaluate and improve our process of pairing the needs of our self-directed older-adult Mentees with the resources and interests of our younger-adult Mentors. 
    • We’d like to evaluate our approach to reversing the Mentor / Mentee roles in our workshops and design more powerful techniques from that evaluation. 
    • We’d like to evaluate our current Mentor and Mentee outreach methodologies in order to design for broader application of outreach methods in other communities. 
  • Research Design: We would like to conduct psychological research that explores Karl Groos’ notion of “the pleasure at being the cause” as it pertains to our older adult mentees by exploring their desire to have the ability to cause predictable effects in their world. We believe older adult’s loss of roles and technological literacy is a precursor to detachment from one’s own identity and thus subsequent experiences of isolation and depression. We wish to explore and possibly prove that: 1) Our assumptions about the correlation of “caused effect” with optimism versus isolation and depression are valid, and 2) Our techniques and methodology for enhancing “the pleasure at being the cause” are valid and effective. 

Women’s Bean Project

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Women’s Bean Project is a non-profit organization that changes women’s lives by providing stepping stones to self-sufficiency through social enterprise.

Women’s Bean Project (WBP) is looking to connect with DU faculty and students on the following projects:

  • Information Dissemination: We would like help updating our strategic communications by creating personalized value propositions applicable to today’s hiring landscape for current and future community partners and potential employees. We’d like to update our collateral (e.g. flyers, website, social media, etc.) to reflect these identified value propositions for each audience.
  • Program Evaluation: We want help measuring the efficacy of programs offered at WBP. We have quantitative evaluation data that we need help synthesizing from some of our programs. Are the learning objectives being met? What is the value? How can we measure all program impacts from our diverse partners? What’s working and what needs to change?
  • Research Design / Data Collection: We would like someone to continue the work of a previous consultant who focused on answering the following research question: What is keeping women who hear the WBP presentation from applying, or who are asked to interview from showing up on the first day?
    • One recommendation includes hosting a design thinking-inspired workshop with WBP participants to gather information about word of mouth referrals, ideas for info sharing, potential incentives, and the competitive advantage (i.e. “magic”) of the organization in comparison to other comparable community organizations. More information provided upon request.
  • Internship: Help us create a new process flow as we redesign a more expedited program process for hiring at WBP. We would like help working with our partners to prepare and plan for this change as well. Our goal is to make sure our new hires are able to take full advantage of our partner’s available programs (Dress for Success, Financial Literacy, free Eye Exams) without having to wait months to a year for the next program session.

Challenge Denver

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Challenge Denver provides middle and high school students with social emotional programming designed to create healthy school environments where students feel understood, accepted, and connected.

Challenge Denver is looking to connect with DU faculty and students on the following projects:

  • Program Evaluation: We would like help designing an evaluation to measure effectiveness of our partnerships with other community organizations in meeting our partner school’s needs.
  • Curriculum Development (MATCHED): Review our “Be the Change” curriculum from the past 13 years and provide updates. Also help us connect to organizations that can support student-directed initiatives. There is also opportunity to deliver the updated curriculum to students. 

PC’s for People

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Through electronic reuse PCs for People provides the opportunity for all low-income individuals and nonprofits to benefit from the life changing impact of computers and mobile internet.

PC’s for People is looking to connect with DU faculty and students on the following projects:

  • Program Evaluation: Implement a pre- and post-assessment to measure the impact of providing computers in students homes who did not have the money to purchase one and did not have one previously
  • Data Collection: What information and/or experience helps a person feel confident in purchasing internet and technology?
  • Literature Review/ Research Design: What level of education/competence is needed to make computer use most beneficial? Are there certain best practices that allow a person to use that technology better (e.g. resources, classes)?
  • Policy Review: What government policies for internet inclusion would grow the market for low cost internet on refurbished computers? (e.g. San Antonio has a goal for 95% of families to have internet in their home by 2020.)
  • Policy Review: What are some effective policies that would influence CO to recycle e-waste? CO currently has a 12% e-waste recycling rate vs 30% average in the nation.
  • Literature Review/Data Collection: How do you get more corporate entities to donate technology waste? Do they need green goals? Do they need to better learn the value of their technology? How do we rethink corporate giving? (e.g. Case studies for current corporate tech donators)
  • Research Design: Environmental scan to see what types of refurbishing and e-waste recycling is happening across the country. Create a set of criteria to identify current efforts, established recycling orgs, and identify what needs they have (e.g. software needs, full recycling effort)
  • Literature Review: What makes a trailblazer city within the digital inclusion/digital equity movement (according to the National Digital Inclusion Alliance)?
  • Research Design/ Data Collection: How do you set up connection points for technology and internet access in Denver Metro? Are there small technology hubs that people are accessing and that PCs for People can help resource (e.g family resource centers, recreation centers)?

Nature Kids/ Jovenes de la Naturaleza

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Nature Kids/ Jovenes de la Naturaleza builds Earth Stewardship by providing joyful, hands-on, place-based environmental education experiences that foster an emotional connection to nature.

Nature Kids (NKJN) is looking to connect with DU faculty and students on the following projects (CURRENTLY ON HOLD FOR PARTNERSHIPS:

  • Program Evaluation/ Research Design (MATCHED): NKJN would like to better understand the higher-level impacts of our full continuum of scaffolded pre-k to high school, backyard to backcountry, and family integrated programming on participants. We would like a researcher to identify gaps in analysis from our current data (Year 1 Report available), suggest new research to measure additional program impacts, and confirm and/or contribute to evidence-based research exploring the impacts of human-nature connection.
    Current areas of interest to NKJN include, but are not limited to:
    1. Health and Wellness (Positive Youth Development, mental health,pro-social behavior)
    2. Student Outcomes (achievement,motivation/concentration, cognitive functioning, identity towards nature/science, career and leadership, etc.)
    3. Community Engagement (involvement with env-related civic processes, belonging, motivation to care for community spaces)
    4. Access(actual and perceived, including nature identity and cultural relevancy)

My Quiet Cave

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My Quiet Cave works to create a space for mental health and faith by providing workshops for faith leaders and facilitating in-person and online groups for those affected by mental disorder. 

My Quiet Cave is looking to connect with DU faculty and students on the following projects:

  • Program Evaluation: Would like to better assess the impacts of our 9-week Overcome facilitated group sessions on participants and facilitators (currently have a post-assessment and are interested in Qualitative evaluation methods).
  • Information Dissemination: Interested in learning how we can improve our outreach to faith-based leaders to engage in mental health education workshops and individuals with mental health issues to engage in Overcome groups.