Services
Program Evaluation Consultant Services
A well-designed program evaluation can initiate a productive feedback loop of learning and improvement for your program, allowing you to get better results for the communities you serve and generate new dollars for your program. Our work evaluating funded programs supports continuous program improvement, replication, dissemination, and reporting activities all in service of making a positive difference for children, families, and communities.
Metis program evaluators have technical expertise in evaluation design, measurement, psychometrics, data management systems, and program implementation and fidelity. From early learning through career readiness, we are steeped in the public and private grant evaluation requirements to support your program.
Our Program Evaluation Services
We offer a full range of program evaluation consulting services, including:
- Support with program replication tools and dissemination
- Working with client grant-writing teams during the proposal stage to define strong program goals, develop measurable outcomes, and write evaluation sections
- Determining evaluation designs and data collection methods aligned to project process objectives, outcomes, and program performance measures
- Developing logic models, theories of change, visual results frameworks, and other evaluation-related tools
- Assessing program fidelity, including inter-rater reliability practices
- Conducting literature and document reviews
- Collecting qualitative data, including focus groups, in-depth individual interviews, case studies, and program observations
- Gathering quantitative data, including student or client outcomes, surveys, and content assessments
- Formative reporting for program improvements
- Performance reporting, including ad hoc, annual, and final reports required by the funding source
Measure Outcomes With Experts
Our program evaluation consultants assess if your programs are making the difference you envision. Start a conversation with us today to learn more.
Our Approach to Program Evaluation
Our approach is high-touch, highly collaborative, flexible, and client-centered. We care about supporting your mission and helping you do better work through the use of evaluation so that you can get better results for the community you care about.
Consultation
We embark on every program evaluation engagement with conversations with your key stakeholders to understand your needs and requirements. When relevant, we create an evaluation advisory team to provide expertise, oversight, and stakeholder engagement throughout the evaluation process.
Evaluation Planning
We conduct document reviews, literature reviews, and initial program leader interviews to immerse ourselves in the program design and implementation. Working with stakeholders, we finalize the evaluation and research questions and develop or refine your program’s logic model.
Data collection & analysis
We use the most appropriate data sources to address the evaluation questions, build and test data collection tools, and collect credible information. We use both qualitative tools, such as interviews and focus groups, and quantitative methods, such as test scores. We develop and execute a data analysis plan based on the types, quality, and completeness of the data collected.
Reporting
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
Experienced federal evaluators
We’ve been evaluating federally funded grant programs for nearly 50 years and stay up-to-the-minute on federal grant requirements. We possess expertise in magnet school evaluations, arts education evaluations, and full service community school grant evaluations, among many others.
Data that tell a story
We tell the story of the data through user-friendly, visually appealing presentations, dashboards, infographics, and evaluation briefs. We deliver the data in easily digestible formats to empower your team to engage and apply them to decision making.
Continuous feedback
We analyze, summarize, and present program evaluation data in a continuous feedback loop to get you actionable, useful data as quickly as possible, so that you can start using this information to make programmatic changes.
Our Program Evaluation Consultants
Donna Wilkens
With more than 25 years of program evaluation experience specializing in federal projects, Donna has served as the lead evaluator for funded programs in the areas of summer learning, afterschool programming, K-12 education, school and community climate and safety, youth development, and full-service community schools.
Julia Alemany
Julia Alemany has over 20 years of experience providing program evaluation, technical assistance, and data management support for Metis clients. She brings to all of her work deep experience with rigorous evaluation design, formative and summative evaluations, and stakeholder engagement. Julia also has strong expertise in building client capacity to use program evaluation data effectively and working with vulnerable and Spanish-speaking populations.
Our Program Evaluation Case Studies
Nevada Positive Behavior Support Technical Assistance Center
Nevada Positive Behavior Support Technical Assistance Center partnered with Metis to conduct an end-of-grant evaluation for its first School Climate Transformation grant, looking at both implementation and outcomes.
Case Study: Supporting School Climate Transformation in Nevada
Magnolia Women’s Recovery Programs, Inc.
Metis has become a trusted evaluation partner for Magnolia, supporting the assessment and continuous improvement of both federally- and locally-funded initiatives.
Case Study: Supporting Recovery and Resilience for Women and Families in Oakland
Frequently Asked Questions: Program Evaluation
Program evaluation is a systematic way to collect, analyze, and use information to answer questions about projects, services, and programs. Its primary goal is to improve the quality and effectiveness of programs and inform decision-making.
A successful program evaluation requires choosing the right evaluation plan so that you get useful, actionable answers to the questions you have about your program. The type of evaluation you should conduct depends on the specific needs and stage of your program, as well as the questions you want to answer. Highly trained Metis evaluators can help you select from the various types of evaluation, such as implementation, outcome, impact, and formative.
Our evaluations can range from $10,000 to well over $200,000 per year, but the cost of hiring an external grant evaluation consultant ultimately depends on the client’s evaluation interests and goals and funder evaluation requirements (if applicable). About 10-15% of the total program costs is a good ballpark for estimating evaluation costs. Factors that can impact the cost of an evaluation include the breadth and depth of the evaluation questions program collaborators want to address, the extensiveness of data collection activities, how much capacity your team has to support the evaluation, and the number of program implementation sites, among others.