2025 marks 25 years of The Improve Group! A lot has changed within our organization and in the world we are working to make better. The mission we have and the values that drive us persist.
Experiences and encounters, big and small, have shaped us. IGers past and present, community members, clients, and partners have made IG who we are today. We are grateful for the many ways we have grown from our experiences:
- Digging into what is working well and where projects challenged us with clients has resulted in powerful lessons learned.
- Through professional associations like the American Evaluation Association, we are in important conversations about the value of an equity-focused, social justice approach for more accurate evaluation findings. At IG, we have shifted to using equity as a lens in all our work, not an approach to use selectively.
- Inside IG, we share experiences—successful and not—that offer lessons learned to inform each other’s evaluation work. As an employer and cooperative, employees and owners also regularly seek and share feedback on how our organizational policies and practices are working for each other.
- We learn both from watching how community partners work and from direct feedback from their valuable perspectives of working outside our organization. Often, the individuals we work with on a project become part of our network of trusted, talented partners with whom we can do more powerful work.
- Community members who participate in our projects make our work and these lessons learned possible. Each project is a chance to learn about an important issue from the people experiencing it firsthand. The passion, insights, and feedback we hear from people who participate in projects continue to shape IG while reinforcing our commitment to our mission.
We’re also reflecting on what has stayed the same over the years. We’ll always meet people who think we are “The Improv Troupe,” not The Improve Group. Sorry to disappoint those looking for a laugh! At the same time, we do laugh. Our value of joy remains. We look for wins and we find fulfillment in learning from what works—or what failed spectacularly. We continue exploring ways to promote equity through our work. We work with mission-driven organizations to make the world a better place—and that focus is not going anywhere.