THE CHALLENGE

Help build organizational capacity of grantees in the Tony Grampsas Youth Services Program.

THE RESULT

11+ Colorado organizations empowered to design and implement rigorous programming.

EMPOWERING GRANTEES TO SHAPE THE MOST EFFECTIVE PROGRAMS POSSIBLE

Addressing youth crime, violence, and marijuana use, as well as child abuse and neglect is an ambitious mission—assessing the outcomes of prevention, intervention, and education programs serving it can be overwhelming.

Tony Grampsas Youth Services (TGYS), a statutory program in Colorado providing funding to local youth serving organizations, aimed to make that process easier for its grantees. Program Administrator Kristi Griffith enlisted the help of our team to support these organizations in building both the evaluation capacity of grantees and the evidence base for their programs.

PERSONALIZED, HIGH-INTENSITY SUPPORT

By joining forces with the Butler Institute at The University of Denver School of Social Work, we redefined how organizations in the TGYS program implemented and measured programs. Over a two-year period, we provided interactive training and coaching sessions to four grantees each month, working to ensure that every concept—from defining their impact strategy and outcomes, to engaging frontline staff in data-based program improvement—felt actionable and valuable.

These grantees had the opportunity to learn about these topics and others, practice them, and immediately apply them to their work. As one participant put it, “It really helped, being able to take these big concepts down to the program level.”

RESULTS

The impact of our training is demonstrated across the Tony Grampsas Youth Services program and the organizations it supports. In one case a grantee, The Conflict Center, had the skills to address shortcomings within the organization’s class offerings. By developing a self-efficacy/control measurement tool, the Center can now accurately track youth outcomes in the areas of critical decision-making and anger management.

Another grantee, Vail Valley Foundation YouthPower365, applied insights from our coaching to better differentiate the organization’s elementary, middle, and high school program models. This clarity of program guidelines and the ability to prepare for broader replication has brought the foundation’s program in alignment with a major national funder.

“The technical assistance and training opportunities Butler Institute and ResultsLab have created for and tailored to TGYS has provided an opportunity for our grantees to take a deeper dive into the goals and outcomes of their programs and continue with their work along the evidence base continuum,” remarked TGYS Administrator Kristi Griffith, “Each year we receive positive feedback from grantees and requests for this opportunity to continue.”

Since 2017, we’ve embarked in an additional three-year partnership with the Butler Institute to continue providing support to an additional TGYS cohort (directly coaching a total of eleven grantees). Our next step in creating lasting change for TGYS is empowering smaller organizations within its network to build their evaluation capacities.

With the right-sized support offered through our Impact Accelerator program, we have no doubt that these grantees will have the mindset, skill set, and tool set necessary to expand their programs smartly!