What We Do We excel in situations where our clients are engaged in innovative social change, are committed to learning, and view measurement as a method to propel their thinking and strategies around future practices.
We excel in situations where our clients are engaged in innovative social change, are committed to learning, and view measurement as a method to propel their thinking and strategies around future practices.
We specialize in the complicated, messy and complex, especially for organizations focused on systems-level change, advocacy and policy and other broad-based efforts that can benefit from systematic inquiry to address key questions to help organizations learn and share back results.
A hallmark of ORS Impact's approach is the blending of creative thinking while balancing the appropriate amount of methodological rigor. We don’t think of rigor as isolated to a particular method, but rather we understand it as the quality and integrity of the entire design and its implementation.
We consider rigor from multiple angles:
Do research questions appropriately reflect what is feasible given inputs and investments from both the foundation and the grantees themselves?
Are methods the right fit, and have we been transparent about the balance of methodological strengths and weaknesses?
Have we successfully avoided risks to reliability and validity in the tools, samples and implementation processes?
Are findings based on triangulated data?
All these considerations would be brought to bear in creating a thoughtful, rigorous research design. While being thoughtful about rigor and data quality, we also consider ways in which a balance of more traditional research methods and approaches (e.g., surveys, focus groups, case studies, social network analysis) fit with more innovative approaches (e.g., process tracing, systems mapping).
Contact us to learn more about our approach. Contact us “We can’t imagine doing our work without ORS Impact. ORS Impact has been our evaluation partner from 2014, when we first conceived of our funder collaborative to improve philanthropy. The firm's ongoing work ranging from program evaluations to media analyses to facilitated reflections on our theory of change has informed our strategy development, program development, how and what we fund, and so much more. Working with ORS Impact is a joyful, continuous learning process and I am confident we at Fund for Shared Insight are more effective because of our partnership.” - Melinda Tuan, Fund for Shared Insight Managing Director
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Related Resources & Publications
Feature Report
This “classic” from ORS Impact provides relevant guidance for organizations getting started on outcome planning and evaluation, clarifying how to create meaningful outcomes, logic models, indicators and basic evaluation plans.
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FEATURE REPORT
Nine activities to implement concepts in Outcomes fo Success! Part 1.
Learn more about our related projects
Feature PROJECT
In support of Measurement, Learning and Evaluation (MLE), ORS Impact engaged with the Education Pathways team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a reliable tool for tracking changes in cross-sector alignment in education focused collaborations that also supported grantee learning and impact.
FEATURE PROJECT
The U.S. decennial Census is a constitutionally mandated count of the population to ensure equal representation in Congress, and its data is widely used to craft policies, plan initiatives, deliver services, and promote economic mobility. The 2020 Census faced unprecedented challenges including a global pandemic, racial justice uprisings, natural disasters, funding and staffing.
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