Anavo Solutions

Anavo Solutions

Anavo Solutions supports organizations to become equitable environments where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. It creates leadershifts both individually and organizationally through its leadership workshops, trainings, and executive coaching sessions. Korwin Consulting is partnering with Anavo Solutions on the Racial Equity and Implicit Bias (R.E.I.B.) Initiative, which engages California county leadership and staff in two California Department of Social Services (CDSS)  programs—CalFresh, which provides food assistance, and CalWORKs, which provides employment support. Korwin Consulting is analyzing data as part of a landscape analysis to support Anavo’s development of recommendations to help CDSS  to build a culture of racial equity, inclusion, and belonging for staff and program participants.

Driving Force Group

Korwin Consulting provided evaluation support to Driving Force Group’s philanthropic initiatives, which are dedicated to social justice, racial equity, and making deep community impact. Korwin Consulting evaluated the Huddle Up initiative, which seeks to improve the quality and responsiveness of the ecosystem – schools, families, and communities — that influence the educational and life outcomes of Black boys. The evaluation used interviews, surveys, and focus groups to collect input and feedback from key staff, community stakeholders, parents/guardians, and students to provide recommendations and highlight outcomes to program staff.

We also developed an evaluation plan and theory of change for the Yetunde Price Resource Center (YPRC), which was created to honor its namesake — the sister of Venus and Serena Williams who was tragically killed by an act of senseless violence in 2003. The YPRC addresses the needs of those who have experienced violence through trauma-informed programming.

Forward Together

Forward Together fosters connections within a multi-racial community of changemakers to secure the rights, recognition, and resources all families need to thrive. Korwin Consulting is currently leading capacity building efforts with Forward Together’s project directors and community organizers that deepens their integration of evaluative thinking in their transformative work.  Leaders will engage in hands-on learning about community oriented and participatory evaluation strategies that will enable them to build their internal capacity and develop a strategic learning stance to support the organization’s life-changing, community-centered work.  In another project, we are working closely with Forward Together’s Strong Families New Mexico program leaders and partners to gather information about the development and impact of this program that brings together organizations and activists to build strong communities and create state and local policies that work for families.

We also partnered with Forward Together for the evaluation of its Stepping Into Power program, a movement building fellowship which brings together women, people of color, queer, trans and gender non-conforming leaders to deepen community with one another and gain transformative skills on multiple levels — individually, organizationally, and for movement leadership.

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation established its Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative in order to support two regional foundations — the Central Valley Community Foundation, based in Fresno and working in communities in California’s Central Valley, and the Latino Community Foundation, based in San Francisco, supporting organizations led by and working with Latino communities in the Central Valley and San Francisco Bay Area.

After eight years of funding an array of teen pregnancy prevention efforts in the Bay Area and Central Valley, the Foundation contracted with Korwin Consulting: (1) to conduct a retrospective analysis at the community and program level to identify what, if anything, has changed in the teen pregnancy prevention landscape in the geographies served, and (2) informed by that analysis, to develop a set of questions that sub-grantees can use to measure knowledge, attitude, and practice outcomes of their programs going forward.

Nuestro Texas

The Nuestro Texas campaign was developed by the Center for Reproductive Rights and National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health in response to severe limitations in access to reproductive health care for low-income and immigrant women in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. One of the poorest regions in the U.S. and home to a large population of immigrant and U.S.-born Latinos, the Valley has some of the most profound barriers to health care in the country. It also has a highly organized network of powerful women — “Las Poderosas” (“the powerful women”) — fighting for their human right to reproductive health care. Launched in 2013, Nuestro Texas supported the women of the Valley as they demanded local, state, and federal policies that would promote their reproductive health and support them in building strong and healthy families and communities. Although the campaign officially ended in the late spring of 2016, activists in the Valley continue to use the Nuestro Texas strategies, publications, and messaging in their ongoing struggle for better reproductive health care access.

Korwin Consulting used a mixed methods approach to evaluate the structure and strategies of Nuestro Texas. Our analysis included a review of communications and reports related to the goals, development, and implementation of the campaign; interviews with partner and ally organization staff members, policy makers, and human rights experts who have heard the women of the Valley talk about the impact that the lack of health care access had on them and their community; interviews and focus groups with Nuestro Texas activists; and an examination of media coverage of the campaign. In addition to this in-depth evaluation, Korwin Consulting developed a concise case study report making the case for applying an international human rights framework to other progressive grassroots social justice campaigns in the U.S.

Download the Nuestro Texas report here.

Women’s Funding Network

Through a network of more than 120 women’s funds and foundations, The Women’s Funding Network (WFN) provides gender justice leaders and advocates with a variety of tools to help them succeed—from research and education, to strategic-led initiatives and events, to advocacy and unifying a collective, amplified voice. Korwin Consulting has worked on several projects with WFN over the years. Most recently, we were integral to the process and evaluation of Women’s Economic Mobility Hubs (WEMH) (2020 – 2021), an initiative in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that invested in 9 U.S.-based women’s funds and foundations implementing place-based models to increase economic mobility for women and gender expansive people and their families. We assisted cohort members in identifying joint metrics to track collective progress and impacts; provided evaluation coaching with the executive and program staff of individual members; and developed interim and final reports and presentations on the achievements, challenges, and lessons gained through this initiative.

Before this, we conducted an evaluation of WFN’s Two-Generation Policy Advocacy Cohort (2017 – 2019), providing evaluation coaching, developing a policy advocacy evaluation webinar for this learning cohort of women’s foundations from across the country, and conducting a mixed methods evaluation about cohort members’ experiences, motivations, and policy outcomes from their individual and collective efforts.

Korwin Consulting also worked as a strategic evaluation partner in WFN’s Partnership for Women’s Prosperity (PWP) — a partnership of U.S. women’s foundations working to help economically vulnerable women and girls gain economic security through education, job training, and employment opportunities — from 2012 through the initiative’s sunset in 2017. Korwin Consulting’s evaluation of PWP revealed that using a systems change framework, which includes emphases on five key approaches — effective programming, creating strong and effective linkages, improving the political environment, developing a strong infrastructure, and taking efforts to scale — can successfully position both local programs and national initiatives to effect change on key social issues.

Download the Partnership for Women’s Prosperity Systems Change Framework report here.

 

Additional projects with WFN include working with the WFN Fund for Shared Insight initiative, which highlighted best practices women’s foundations are using to increase their openness and transparency.

Groundswell Fund

Groundswell Fund supports a stronger, more effective U.S. movement for reproductive justice (RJ) by mobilizing new funding and capacity-building resources for grassroots organizing and policy change efforts led by women of color, low-income women, and transgender people. Our work to evaluate the impact that Groundswell’s RJ grantees are having on policy, base building, public opinion, and the framing of reproductive health and rights in the U.S. provides information and understanding that help Groundswell and its grantees build the effectiveness and sustainability of the RJ movement.

Korwin Consulting has worked with Groundswell Fund since 2008, evaluating its support for RJ through the Catalyst Fund and, later, other funding initiatives. We have used a combination of interviews, surveys, focus groups, evaluation coaching, and training and have participated in convenings with national and local philanthropic partners and women of color-led RJ organizations hosted by Groundswell. In 2014, we worked with Groundswell staff, grantees, and other stakeholders to design a new online evaluation survey for RJ grantees that would best capture data and stories related to power-building, accomplishments, challenges, and lessons learned.

We have also partnered with Groundswell Fund to evaluate Groundswell’s Integrated Voter Engagement (IVE) program, which provides technical support to RJ organizations using an innovative approach that blends community organizing and voter engagement in a sustained way to boost the scale and power of grassroots organizations to win systems change. Currently, Korwin Consulting is collaborating with staff on developing evaluation tools and processes that will minimize grantees’ reporting burden for Groundswell Fund’s Liberation Fund, which supports organizations led by prominent women of color and transgender people of color engaging in effective grassroots organizing across social justice sectors.

National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice

National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice (Latina Institute) builds Latinas’ power to guarantee the fundamental human right to reproductive health, dignity and justice. Collaborating closely with Latina Institute staff, Korwin Consulting is helping the organization better understand its internal capacity, learn about the impact of its culture change and activism efforts, share its accomplishments with constituents and funders, and inform future program planning. From 2015-2019, we analyzed the organization’s current evaluation strategies, developed an evaluation framework, surveyed Latina Institute staff and community activists, and conducted focus groups with its Local Area Network activists in Florida and Texas, bringing greater clarity about their engagement, satisfaction, and capacity to build community power.

Women’s Foundation of Minnesota

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.
  • 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.

New York Women’s Foundation

The New York Women’s Foundation invests in women (cis and trans) and non-binary community leaders and solutions that advance the economic security, safety, and health of the most overlooked women. It unites cross-cultural alliances that ignite action and build economic, gender, and racial justice for families across New York City and State. Korwin Consulting partners with The Foundation on several initiatives and on deepening its own internal culture of strategic learning and evaluation. Past Korwin Consulting projects included helping The Foundation’s reproductive justice grantee partners measure their own impact by offering group training, one-on-one evaluation coaching, development of an Advocacy Evaluation Resource Guide, and analysis of data submitted in the Women’s Funding Network’s Making the Case online evaluation tool.

Current and ongoing projects include collaborating with Foundation staff and grantee partners to develop and refine theories of change, grant report tools and processes, and conduct group interviews to inform planning and practices related to several initiatives and strategies. Among them are: The Justice Fund, a collaborative grantmaking and philanthropic mobilization effort which aims to dismantle mass incarceration in New York City; The NYC Fund for Girls & Young Women of Color, a collaborative fund to increase sustained investments for girls and young women of color—inclusive of transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary (TGNCNB) youth—to succeed and thrive; The Brooklyn Economic Justice Project, which supports and invests in organizations working collectively to interrupt gentrification and catalyze economic strength and liberation in four Brooklyn neighborhoods; and The Foundation’s Early Investment strategy, which provides funding and capacity building opportunities for nascent organizations to grow and thrive as they develop and implement strategies with their communities to build gender, racial, and other justice movements.

We are also working with the foundation to engage in deeper reflection and planning to inform its day-to-day grantmaking and community engagement strategies and reach the goals outlined in its strategic plan.