AEM Blue

AEM’s evaluation support helps define accomplishments for Fund the Future grantees and stakeholders.

The Community Foundation Sonoma County awards Fund the Future (FTF) grants to Sonoma County, CA-based educational agencies and non-profits with the goal of improving literacy rates in children by third grade, a major milestone in childhood development. Bringing a highly qualified research team with experience in education program assessment, AEM designed and executed a collective impact evaluation which measured the effects of grantees’ literacy initiatives.

AEM evaluated grantees across a diverse breadth of programming over a period of two years. AEM’s research team developed indicators for program success, selected evaluation assessments, developed data collection measures and templates, and provided technical assistance to grantees to support their evaluation data collection. The team analyzed the collected data for trends in participation in the programs and for trends in the collective impact on literacy outcomes.

To express these trends, AEM’s team created reports which included presentations and an executive summary. Furthermore, AEM supported grantees in creating their own Success Stories featuring program implementation and outcomes within a standardized template for presentation to executive board members. These activities helped to define program success and AEM’s support helped both grantees and FTF establish evaluation best practices for their funded programming.