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Evaluation

Attendees at the ESHIP Summit/Mayors Conference event

Evaluation

Evaluation provides Foundation leadership and staff with rigorous evidence to support strategic learning and inform decision-making about grants and the programs we operate directly.

Our evaluation work is driven by three goals:

  1. Track and understand our progress in achieving strategic objectives.
  2. Create and share lessons learned along the way.
  3. Use evaluation results to increase our impact.

The Foundation’s evaluation framework spans all three levels at which the Foundation operates: grants, internally operated programs, and program-area strategies. While we use different measurement approaches for each of these levels, there is a consistent focus on establishing and tracking progress toward key outcomes.


2019 Annual Learning Report

March 9, 2020 | We believe in collecting and analyzing data and reflecting on the results can lead to important learnings that improve our work moving forward. This brief summarizes the five key themes from lessons developed in 2019.


Building an Internal Learning Culture in a Foundation report

September 5, 2019 | Kauffman Foundation summer intern Leann Caudill shares four recommendations on how to build a culture of learning inside a Foundation.


Kauffman Foundation Annual Learning Report 2018

March 6, 2019 | Each year, the Kauffman Foundation gathers the lessons shared by our grantees and presents a summary of them in the Annual Learning Report. Here are the results of 2018’s learnings.


Kauffman Foundation Annual Learning Report 2017

January 18, 2018 | The 2017 Annual Learning Report from the Kauffman Foundation synthesizes the key themes we see across the lessons that have been generated from grant reports, external evaluations and staff presentations to the Board of Trustees.


Kauffman Foundation Nonprofit Effectiveness Report 2017

January 18, 2018 | The goal of the Kauffman Foundation’s Kansas City Civic Nonprofit Effectiveness funding area is to strengthen nonprofits through services provided to them by quality intermediary organizations. These intermediaries provide services designed to build nonprofit capacity and efficiencies so that nonprofit organizations can, in turn, better serve community needs.