What we do
PIE Org takes a collaborative, culturally responsive approach to evaluation and strategic planning that emphasizes making data understandable and actionable.
Key Services
Evaluation and Learning
PIE is an expert in collaborative, culturally responsive evaluation work.
Our evaluations seek to answer key questions your organization and community have about impact, implementation, and equity. Our evaluation work is dynamic—we offer evaluation services in support of small, community-based organizations, as well as multi-site, complex programs. We are adept at using both quantitative and qualitative data to help “tell your story” and identify key ways that you can improve and sustain your impact over time. We do this through our unique process, detailed below, which has successfully supported hundreds of evaluations, both large and small.
Strategic Planning
PIE prioritizes data-driven, equity-based and implementation-focused planning to drive meaningful change at your organization. We promise that this is not a strategic plan that will collect dust on the shelf! We work closely with your Board(s), staff, participants and community members to help all your stakeholders understand the need for strategic improvements. We will also work alongside your organization to begin implementation, and leave you with not only a robust strategic plan, but also action plans, implementation dashboards, and organizational cheerleaders. If needed, we bring PIE’s evaluation team in to assess and improve your data management, program evaluation and continuous improvement systems. We only work with government, philanthropic, and nonprofit agencies – helping you better serve your communities is our sole focus.
Capacity Building: Evaluation and Strategy Coaching
PIE is a leader in the field of capacity building and evaluation coaching; our approach to this work has been documented in numerous peer-reviewed articles below.
Evaluation capacity building (ECB) interventions Article
Evaluation Coaching Model Article
The Unified Outcomes Project Article
Throughout all of our partnerships, PIE actively models how evaluation and strategic planning are important tools for social change. As a result, we aim to provide high quality capacity building services to all organizations, no matter the size or scope. This work supports small, community-based organizations to build out sustained evaluation systems as well as larger organizations with internal evaluation teams, to provide evaluation coaching that can support improved practices and systems.
For strategic planning work, we can support you in the implementation of your strategic plan, but also help you re-calibrate. We act as thought partners, do background research and lead key staff or teams through reflection and decision-making processes to ensure your organization gets – or stays – on track.
We also offer a series of workshops, which can be curated to the specific needs of your organization, to support best practices and ongoing learning.
Our Process
Our projects are all highly customized in order to address each of our mission-driven clients’ unique needs. However, they all have the following four phases in common:
1
Prepare
PIE recognizes that your organization and your communities are the real experts; we are just here to support a learning process. In this spirit, we begin all our partnerships by embarking on
2
Develop
3
Learn
Throughout all our partnerships, we will review findings and feed data back to staff in real-time across stakeholders. As such, no findings or recommendations are a surprise, and we offer opportunities throughout the our process to support reflection and identify next steps and lessons learned. Typically, we formally review data at a both the mid-point and final data collection points; however, based on program needs we can also meet quarterly.
At these meetings, we support “data walks” where stakeholders review data together, discuss their implications, and think through ways to apply lessons learned to improve organizational impact. At the end of our partnership, we will provide not only a final report or plan, but also dissemination materials, such as infographics and slide decks, so that stakeholders and effectively communicate the impact and next steps of their work.
4
Build Capacity
free workshops for our clients, aligned to each organization’s specific needs.
Who We Serve
I appreciate how flexible and responsive PIE is. They have consistently gone above and beyond throughout our partnership.