The Women’s Foundation of Minnesota (WFM) is a statewide community foundation investing in innovation to drive gender and racial equity. Korwin Consulting has partnered closely with the Foundation since 2015 by integrating evaluation into its strategies to advance equity for women, girls, and gender-expansive people with an emphasis on communities of color and low-income and immigrant communities. Korwin Consulting serves as the evaluator for many of the Foundation’s initiatives, developing and implementing evaluation strategies that will maximize the impact of its grantmaking programs. Recent and ongoing projects include:
- Evaluating the various components and strategies of the Young Women’s Initiative (YWI). A public-private partnership between the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota and the state of Minnesota, YWI is a multi-year, multi-million-dollar investment that centers the leadership and solutions young women and gender-expansive people who identify as Black, Indigenous/Native American, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, LGBQ+ as well as those who are from Greater/rural Minnesota and those with disabilities.
- Supporting the Foundation’s evaluation and learning strategies related to girlsBEST (Girls Building Economic Success Together), a grantmaking program to build the economic power of girls and young gender-expansive people, ages 12–18.
- Ongoing partnership with Foundation staff to continue to develop its culture of reflection and strategic learning.
- Korwin Consulting worked closely with the Foundation to evaluate Minnesota Girls Are Not For Sale, a $7.5 million campaign, launched in November 2011 to end sex trafficking in Minnesota through grantmaking, research, public education, and policy change. Some evaluation efforts focused on understanding the impact of demand-reduction strategies, prevention strategies, and outreach and services to those most impacted by sexual exploitation provided by key community partners in advance of and during the 2018 Super Bowl in Minneapolis.
- Other work has included working with the Foundation to develop and implement evaluation strategies to maximize the impact of its grantmaking programs; providing an evaluation capacity building workshop for Foundation staff and Pathways to Prosperity (P2P) grant partners leading programs to build women’s and girls’ economic security at or in close partnership with community colleges; and partnering with the Foundation to evaluate implementation and impact of its strategic plan.