The focus of the Foundation’s grantmaking and change making work is to help make Detroit children safe, healthy, educated, and prepared for success. We don’t want to beat the odds for Detroit children, we want to change them. Although we know that we cannot do this work alone, our aim is to become a results-driven organization. We believe we are accountable to the communities we serve.

Over the coming year the Foundation will determine its success metrics and key indicators. The Skillman Foundation has contracted with the Center for Youth and Communities at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University to be its evaluation and learning partner. Brandeis is working closely with Foundation staff and key partners to establish a high performance learning organization able to achieve high quality, outcome-driven results in the six targeted Detroit neighborhoods.

The goals of the evaluation in the first phase are to:

• build the capacity to evaluate the work within the Foundation and its partners;

• provide useful, usable, and timely data for decision-making and continuous improvement; and

• develop an evaluation framework and design for the work as it moves into the full-scale demonstration/implementation phase.

During this period the evaluation will assist Foundation staff to articulate their goals, strategies and intended outcomes with increasing clarity and specificity within a logic model framework; align their internal structures and practices, time, and resources to achieve these goals over time; and reinforce a focus on shared goals, outcomes, and accountabilities among multiple and diverse stakeholders.

This approach is guided by a set of principles or values about the role of evaluation, namely that it should be:

• integrated in the work (not a stand-alone activity)

• embedded in the Foundation’s systems and structure (board, management team, staff)

• an ongoing, collective responsibility (not a discrete, outsourced function)

• participatory and collaborative (increasing stakeholder commitment and utilization of results)

• flexible and dynamic (responsive to the realities of implementation)

• culturally and technically competent

• operating within an organizational culture that values transparency, critical inquiry and learning

Although the primary audience for this phase of the evaluation is the Foundation and the other stakeholders in the work, the evaluation also aims to (1) generate credible reports on the progress of the work that can serve to attract additional partners and investments and contribute to system change; and (2) share lessons as they evolve from the readiness phase with diverse audiences locally and nationally.

Marie Colombo is The Skillman Foundation’s Knowledge Management Officer. Della M. Hughes, Sr. Fellow, and Professor Susan P. Curnan, Director of the Center for Youth and Communities, are Co-Principal Investigators for the evaluation. Prudence Brown, formerly a research fellow at Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, serves as an evaluation consultant to the Foundation.

A National Advisory Committee on Evaluation with representatives form a variety of disciplines, all with extensive experience in the evaluation of comprehensive community change initiatives, has also been created to provide critical and independent guidance to the Foundation.

In addition to developing an overarching evaluation and learning framework, the Foundation is currently engaged in the evaluation of three significant programmatic strategies.

Evaluation of the Good Schools: Making the Grade Initiative

The Good Schools: Making the Grade initiative is a seven-year effort designed to improve the range of high-quality educational opportunities for Detroit’s young people. The first three years (beginning in school year 2004-05) were designed as a pilot period during which the program was sequentially introduced first in elementary, then middle and finally high schools. In order to systematically assess implementation and initial outcomes, Wayne State University’s Center for Urban Studies is conducting a three-year process and outcome evaluation. The evaluation provides feedback to the Foundation and the National and Local Advisory groups that help shape the program. It will also be an important source of information about the impact of this innovative urban schools strategy.

Evaluation of the Youth, Sports and Recreation Initiative

The Skillman Foundation launched the Youth Sports & Recreation Initiative (YSRI) in the fall of 1992 with the primary goal to involve significantly more youth, parents, and mentors in sports, recreation and youth development activities during the non-school hours in the Detroit area. These activities could include organized sports, physical fitness, culture and arts, dance and other non-school recreation. Out-of-school time programming has continued to be a focus of the Foundation’s grantmaking since that time.

In April 2005 The Skillman Foundation engaged the Center for Youth and Communities at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University to conduct an implementation study of YSRI and a rigorous evaluation of program quality, youth participation, and outcomes. Brandeis has completed the implementation study and report. It has concluded field work for the outcome study and reports will be available later this year. The evaluation will provide the Detroit community with critical information to about the quality and impact of youth programming.

Evaluation of the Culture and Arts Youth Development Initiative

The three-year Culture and Arts Youth Initiative, launched in late 2003, was designed to make culture and arts programs more available to young people in neighborhoods throughout Detroit, and demonstrate that culture and arts programs result in positive developmental outcomes for young people. Grounded in current research in the fields of youth development and the creative arts, the Initiative addressed three goals: involve youth, ages 11 to 18, in the creative process of the arts; engage youth in high-quality, long-term experiences creating art; and grow and develop youth using the arts.

In tandem with the YSRI evaluation, the Foundation engaged the Center for Youth and Communities at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University in July 2005 to conduct an implementation and outcome study of CAYDI. A monograph on early findings from a cluster study of a sample of CAYDI programs designed for a broad audience of culture and arts and youth development organizations in Detroit, foundations with a focus on culture and arts, and policy makers is available here. A second related study of the impact of program quality on youth participation and outcomes will be the subject of a report in spring 2008.

Evaluation Resources for Skillman Foundation grantees are available here.