The Improve Group is a worker-owned evaluation consulting cooperative. We provide evaluation, planning, and facilitation to support mission-driven organizations to effectively develop more resilient, equitable, and thriving communities.

We see community engagement as critical and draw on our engagement skillset across projects. We work with public, nonprofit, and philanthropic clients across Minnesota, the U.S., and internationally. Over 24 years, we have sustained a healthy organization through learning, growing, and evolving while staying true to our values. Our transition to worker-ownership in 2023 aligned our business structure with our long-held values of participatory leadership. 

We are experts in evaluation, planning, facilitation, and community engagement.

Our evaluation skillset helps us work with clients in all types of projects to clarify what is most important to learn for deepening their impact. We learn new skills and insightful lessons in each project. Our organizational culture promotes sharing these lessons learned to apply them in future projects. We regularly engage with the evaluation field to stay on the leading edge.

We are committed to equity. We aim to work in partnerships where we dare and inspire each other to be more equity-focused.

The principle of equity acknowledges existing injustice. Equity recognizes the structural factors, such as white supremacy, that have unfairly privileged some at the expense of people who experience inequity. We must work on intentional, thoughtful, and just remedies to ensure we do not perpetuate these harms. To us, equity means operating in ways within and outside our organization—from hiring new employees to planning an evaluation—that work for all the different people we may encounter. Equitable practices result in more accurate, complete data that accelerates clients’ work to make the world a better place. See our equity statement here on our website.

Our values drive what we do and how we do it.

We are committed to helping local, national, and international organizations make the most of information, navigate complexity, and ensure their investments lead to meaningful, sustained impact. Our vision is that mission-driven organizations will effectively develop more resilient, equitable, and thriving communities. Our values and vision show up in how we work. We take our commitments seriously without losing the joy that is inherent to working to build a better world. We work with humility, listen openly and deeply, and work to improve based on lessons learned and feedback. We know evaluation can be scary and work to infuse joy, curiosity, and fun into projects. Clients who work with us gain not only helpful data, but also strengthened relationships and a revived sense of why they do what they do.