Evaluation That Honors People, Clarifies Impact, and Strengthens Programs
Our Approach
At Authentic Evaluation, our approach is built around understanding your intended impact, learning how your programs operate, and designing culturally responsive and creative methods that are fun for your participants and generate meaningful insights. Our process blends arts-based techniques, community voice, and practical analysis to help organizations reduce burden, improve clarity, and make decisions with confidence.
Our 5 Step Evaluation Process
Deep Understanding of Your Intended Impact
We begin by listening. Through a variety of activities, including discussions and focus groups with staff, leadership, and the populations you serve, we clarify your intended impact, uncover areas of misalignment, and ground the evaluation in meaningful outcomes.
Understanding Current Activities
We examine your existing data, materials, and processes through document review, environmental scanning, interviews, and assessment of existing data collection systems.
Evaluation and Gap Analysis
We assess what is working, what isn’t, and where opportunities exist to improve alignment between your activities and intended impact. Using arts-based and culturally responsive methods, we identify needs, alternative actions, or program adjustments that could lead to stronger outcomes.
Findings and Recommendations
We provide practical, actionable recommendations that strengthen program alignment, improve staff efficiency, and support mission-aligned decision-making.
Choose Your Path Forward
After we present the findings and recommendations, you select the support model that best fits your goals and capacity:
Ongoing Evaluation Implementation
We handle design, facilitation, data-gathering, and reporting.Internal Training & Capacity-Building
We train your staff to implement the recommended evaluation process.A Hybrid Model
We share responsibilities to maximize learning, efficiency, and sustainability.
Evaluation should support your mission, not burden it.
Why This Approach Works
With our dedication to culturally responsive and arts-based evaluation methods as supplements or replacements for common quantitative and qualitative methods, we help organizations:
Reduce staff workload by integrating evaluation with existing program activities.
Improve outcomes by gathering accurate data that measures what is really happening in your program.
Strengthen the case for funding with clear, meaningful, story-driven reporting.
Empower teams by teaching them how to collect, interpret, and use data with confidence.
Authentic Evaluation reinforces programs, deepens relationships, and creates impact that funders and communities can see and feel.
Ready to begin?Let’s build an evaluation process that reflects your values, honors your community, and strengthens your outcomes.