Businesses have traditionally had fairly simple metrics that they use to evaluate their work: sales and profit. However, three factors are driving businesses to consider social benefit as well:
April 30, 2015 - 11:52am
March 25, 2015 - 1:10pm
A 2001 study published in the American Journal of Public Health reached out to over 100 people with very different life experiences to answer the question “What does the word community mean to you?” You might find your own answer to the question in their responses:
October 30, 2014 - 11:09am
Any profession has its own set of terrors and spooky stories... Just for Halloween the Improve Group brings you an evaluator’s terrifying trifecta!
June 30, 2014 - 11:10am
Over our years of conducting and completing consulting contracts, the Improve Group recognized a pattern that led to enormous project success. This discovery was that in each of the projects where we had invested a significant amount of time in the beginning stages to learn about systems, data, and the people we would be working with, we were able to ultimately identify deeper insights and help organizations understand issues more thoroughly.
April 23, 2014 - 12:31pm
Special education services are often as customized as possible for the students who need them. In fact, many schools now collaborate with families to create individualized education programs (IEPs) for each student who is eligible for special education services.
December 16, 2013 - 3:12pm
You can draw stronger conclusions from your survey data when you have a high response rate. Incentives can increase the likelihood that people participate, and acknowledges that their time is valuable to the research. Traditionally, these incentives come in the form of gift cards, food, money, etc. A newer trend in incentives is to “pay it forward” through a gift in kind.
October 22, 2013 - 3:17pm
This morning, National Public Radio featured a piece on the upcoming results aspect of Charity Navigator’s rating system.
May 29, 2013 - 5:26pm
The American Marketing Association defines market research as the process of using information to link the public to marketers. Investopedia says market research allows companies to better understand their target market and how they will respond to a product or service. Market research is traditionally seen as being used in the business sector.
March 20, 2013 - 3:44pm
Sometimes your ideas aren’t linear. They involve complex relationships, dependencies, etc.
March 20, 2013 - 3:37pm
The Improve Group is always looking for creative ways to measure and evaluate program outcomes and their long-term impacts. Ripple effect mapping brings something new to the table by framing analysis around the initial program outcomes and how they connect to and interact with the larger service area, community, etc. It is a participatory strategy for measuring program outcomes, particularly those requiring collaboration among stakeholders or sectors.