Focus Areas
Youth Development
Through our decades of experience evaluating youth development initiatives, we’ve seen how sustained participation in a high-quality program can have a positive impact on attendance rates, behavior, social emotional learning, critical thinking, collaboration, and teamwork. We support a range of programs from out-of-school-time to leadership initiatives to re-engagement opportunities for youth ages 10-21 in school or community settings.
Working within a positive youth development framework, we help you assess implementation and outcomes, identify the best instruments to measure growth, and navigate state and federal quality standards using tools such as the Weikart Center’s YPQI/YPQA. We integrate youth voices into the evaluation and program design using participatory engagement methods and view young people as experts on their own experiences and engage them as critical members of the research team.
Our Youth Development Consulting Services
We help program leaders develop youth services programs with measurable goals, while embedding authentic youth and community voices in all elements of a program.
Grant writing
Our youth development consultants and evaluators help you secure funding from federally- and state-funded youth development programs, create your logic model or theory of change (often required in grant applications), and develop objectives and measurable outcomes.
Data management and support
We help you meet data reporting requirements and deliver the data in easily digestible formats to empower your team to apply this information to decision making. Our technical assistance support services include training to build your organization’s internal capacity to collect, analyze, and use data for continuous improvement.
Program evaluation
If it’s a non-academic skill, you can still measure it—you just need evaluators who understand what success looks like for youth and their families. We find or create the right tools to measure your program’s outcomes, including social-emotional learning, academic outcomes, leadership, behavior in school, and engagement in school.
Our Youth Development Expertise
Our youth development grant consulting expertise includes the following areas:
- Violence and substance abuse prevention
- Out-of-school time programs
- Teenage pregnancy prevention
- Adolescent sexual health education
- Youth financial empowerment
- Alternative pathways to high school graduation
- Youth leadership development
Organizations We Work With
Client Testimonials
Metis has conducted evaluations of all of our signature programs. They have served as thought partners and avid listeners in understanding the big picture and the end goals. They have contributed valuable ideas and insight to our work. They have talented staff willing to go the extra mile.
Maggie Vazquez
Former Vice President, Programs
Girl Scouts of Greater New York
Metis Associates brings not only the technical and research skills necessary to carry out a project, but equally importantly, they bring content expertise, an understanding of how public systems work, and a commitment to improving outcomes for children, youth, and families. As consultants, they take the time to understand the objectives of the project and then bring creative solutions for accomplishing it.
Susan Notkin
Executive Vice President
Center for the Study of Social Policy
I see Metis as a true partner. They have taken the time to deeply understand our goals, our grantees, and the realities of implementing a statewide initiative at scale. Their hands-on technical assistance strengthened grantees’ capacity to measure outcomes, use data for continuous improvement, and build stronger local data systems, leaving a lasting impact that extends well beyond the evaluation itself.
Dr. Kinyatta Trice
Associate Director of BOOST
Georgia Statewide Afterschool Network (GSAN)
Ready to make an impact?
Learn how we can support your youth development efforts.
Our Approach to Youth Development Evaluations
Using a highly collaborative and participatory approach, Metis’s overarching evaluation process encompasses the following key steps:
Consultation
Every youth development program evaluation engagement begins with conversations with your key stakeholders to understand your needs and to assess your capacity to conduct a formative, summative, and/or descriptive evaluation.
Evaluation planning
We conduct document and literature reviews and initial program leader interviews to immerse ourselves in the program design and implementation.
Evaluation design
Working with stakeholders, we finalize the evaluation design, including developing research questions and developing or refining your program’s logic model and evaluation instruments.
Data collection & analysis
We execute the evaluation plan, collecting data from all stakeholders and analyzing the data using appropriate qualitative and quantitative methods.
Reporting & continuous improvement
We convey, justify, and disseminate findings. We tailor evaluation results to your audience and facilitate discussion to drive continuous improvement.
Why Partner with Metis Associates
Recruitment and retention
Participant recruitment and retention are unique challenges in youth development programs. We obtain feedback directly from youth participants and their families and use it to identify and collaborate on removing barriers to engagement, leading to greater program sustainability and long-term success.
Youth development experts
We have decades of experience working in youth development, and we have the strategies to address its challenges, such as family engagement and staff recruitment and retention. In a field where resources are often an issue, we can help match you to the right funding and even write your proposal.
Measure impact
In addition to assessing academic outcomes in out-of-school settings, we bring a deep understanding of hard-to-measure outcomes such as social-emotional learning, belonging, and engagement, using validated instruments to measure them and developing custom tools when needed.
Our Youth Development Consultants
Donna Wilkens
Donna is a Managing Senior Associate at Metis Associates, where she has built over three decades of expertise in research, evaluation, and program development focused on children, youth, and families. Throughout her career, Donna has championed participatory, evidence-based approaches that strengthen program quality and build organizational capacity—particularly for youth from historically underserved communities.
A respected leader in youth development evaluation, Donna directed Metis’s multi-year evaluation of Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s Summer Brain Gain program, a national summer learning initiative designed to prevent learning loss among underserved youth. Donna directs Metis’s evaluation of Georgia’s Building Opportunities in Out-of-School Time (BOOST) program, one of the most ambitious statewide OST investments in the country. The comprehensive evaluation features a Youth Evaluation Advisory Group in which middle and high school students serve as active collaborators in the evaluation process.
Donna also directs Metis’s long-standing evaluation partnership with Girls Inc. of New York City, overseeing assessments of a comprehensive suite of programs spanning leadership development, STEM skills, financial literacy, mind-body well-being, healthy sexuality, and college success.
Matt Klepfer
Matt Klepfer is a Research Associate with more than eight years of experience in applied research, evaluation, and data visualization. They manage and support evaluation projects for youth development and arts education programs, partnering with schools, nonprofits, and community organizations across the country.
Matt brings a strong mixed-methods orientation to their work, emphasizing participatory and empowerment-focused evaluation approaches. Matt’s approach is shaped by their background in community organizing, which informs their belief in the power of data to support positive change. Passionate about building organizational capacity, Matt is committed to helping programs measure and communicate their work and impact. They are skilled at creating accessible, highly engaging deliverables for an array of audiences including families, program staff, and organizational leaders.
Matt brings to their work a spirit of collaboration, creativity, curiosity, and joy. They are passionate about uplifting organizations that are connected to and serving their communities.
Get guidance at every step.
Service your program from vision to results with seasoned consultants who know youth development inside and out.
Our Youth Development Case Studies
Metis developed a comprehensive cross-site evaluation for the Georgia Statewide Afterschool Network to evaluate implementation and outcomes addressing learning loss and student well-being.
Case Study: Evaluating Georgia’s Statewide Investment in Out-of-School Time Programming
The Girl Scouts of Greater New York engaged Metis over the past four summers to study their Urban Day Camp program.
Frequently Asked Questions: Youth Development
Metis has experience evaluating a wide range of youth development programs, including afterschool, summer-learning, and other out-of-school time programs. Many of the youth development programs we evaluate are supported through federal grant programs operated by the U.S. Education Department and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as well as initiatives funded through state and local agencies and private foundations.
Challenges that can impact the quality of evaluations of youth development programs include data collection difficulties, ethical and privacy considerations, resource constraints, and the need to address different stakeholders’ expectations and definitions of success (e.g., funders, community members, program staff). Metis can help you identify strategies to address these challenges and ensure the quality and effectiveness of the evaluation process.
One of the misconceptions about outcomes in the youth development program area is that non-academic skills can’t be measured rigorously. We can help you find or create validated instruments to assess the particular impact your program is driving. It may look different for each program or skill, but there are ways to measure non-academic, creative, and social emotional skills.
Talk to us about your youth development needs
Get in touch with us to learn more about our services and how we can best help you achieve your mission.