Evaluation Review

This case study discusses two federal grant initiatives and the evaluation technical assistance (ETA) provided to the grantees. One program is a multiphase program funded by the Children’s Bureau (CB) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. The program funded communities interested in preventing homelessness among youth and young adults with child welfare histories. The funder, grantees, and ETA provider call it Youth At-Risk of Homelessness (YARH). Six federal agencies—the U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor, the Corporation for National and Community Service, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services—supported the second initiative known as Performance Partnership Pilots for Disconnected Youth (P3). We discuss the programs together as they share common features including a focus on building evidence, a focus on disconnected youth, use of liaisons to work with grantees who are developing interventions and planning or conducting evaluations at the same time, and having the same liaisons provide ETA to both the grantee/service providing group and the local evaluator. The article discusses (1) the grant programs, (2) details about ETA including its funding and provision, (3) details about the success and utilization of ETA, (4) benefits of ETA, and (5) balancing program or initiative requirements and evaluation needs and concludes with (6) thoughts on how to make ETA successful.

The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program, administered by the Health Resources and Service Administration in collaboration with the Administration for Children and Families, provides evidence-based home visiting services across 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories. MIECHV invests in comprehensive technical assistance (TA) to support and build the capacity of awardees to conduct rigorous evaluations of their programs. Throughout the course of the evaluation process, awardees received TA from the Design Options for Home Visiting Evaluation project. Between 2011 and 2020, over 173 state-led evaluations have been conducted. Individual technical assistance (TA) modalities included conference calls, emails, interactive and individualized webinars, developing and sharing resources, and involvement of content experts. When issues and challenges were identified across multiple awardees, Design Options for Home Visiting Evaluation (DOHVE) delivered targeted group TA to awardees with common needs that may benefit from peer-to-peer learning. When cross-cutting issues and challenges were identified, DOHVE used universal approaches such as webinars and guidance documents that were made available to all awardees.Through the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program, efforts have been taken to promote awardee capacity by targeting all phases of the evaluation process, including planning, implementing, and disseminating findings and providing TA that is responsive and tailored to meet awardee-specific needs. This approach enabled DOHVE to support MIECHV awardees in expanding knowledge of their programs and the evidence base on home visiting. Lessons learned from TA provision highlight the importance of developing feasible plans and providing ongoing support during implementation.

The Social Innovation Fund (SIF), a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service that received funding from 2010 to 2016, is one of a set of tiered evidence initiatives that was designed and implemented at the federal level during President Obama’s administration. The key objectives of the initiative were to (1) invest in promising interventions that address social and community challenges and grow their impact and (2) invest in evaluation and capacity building in order to support the development and use of rigorous evidence to measure the effectiveness of each funded intervention (i.e., to “move the evidence needle”) and inform decision making. The SIF proved successful in strengthening and sustaining the capacity of its implementing partners to conduct rigorous evaluations when put through a robust impact evaluation of its own at the national level. It has also spurred high-quality local evaluations that are building knowledge and a body of evidence across the supported program models to inform practice. The SIF’s evaluation technical assistance program was critical to its success, and as such, its design and approach holds interesting lessons for the larger field. This article discusses the structure and key features of the SIF as a grant making model, its evaluation requirements, and embedded approach and process for evaluation capacity building and the delivery of technical assistance, the tools and resources that it generated to support its goals, the evidence supporting its success, and how those lessons can inform other organizations and initiatives.