Podcast Archives - Glass Frog Solutions

We talk this month with Andrew Taylor and Ben Liadsky of Taylor Newberry Consulting, a program evaluation firm just outside of Toronto, Canada. Andrew and Ben chat with us about building a learning culture -- what it means and how foundations can help support their grantees in this effort. This discussion reminded us a lot of our conversation with Sammy and Scott from Arbor Brothers in the sense that it reminded us of all the ways in which funders can lead the way for promoting healthy evaluation and learning practices with their grantees. We'll share this episode with some of our funder friends and so should you!

We talk this month with Andrew Taylor and Ben Liadsky of Taylor Newberry Consulting, a program evaluation firm just outside of Toronto, Canada. Andrew and Ben chat with us about building a learning culture -- what it means and how foundations can help support their grantees in this effort. This discussion reminded us a lot of our conversation with Sammy and Scott from Arbor Brothers in the sense that it reminded us of all the ways in which funders can lead the way for promoting healthy evaluation and learning practices with their grantees. We'll share this episode with some of our funder friends and so should you! The post Building a Learning Culture with Andrew Taylor and Ben Liadsky appeared first on Glass Frog Solutions.

This month we had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Kerry Anne McGeary at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Kerry Anne is an economist who transitioned from a more traditional academic research role into the role of program officer at the Foundation. She is great to chat with -- she is smart but sensible; she is a skilled and experienced researcher but knows how to get things done in the real world; and she cares about her work and its impact! We pick Kerry Anne's brain about how to measure and track impact when changes to health culture and behaviors take so long to unfold; how she uses her training as a researcher to inform her work for the Foundation; and the role that culture can play in shaping health behaviors. We enjoyed learning from Kerry Anne and, as usual, think you will, too! The post Evaluation of Health Initiatives with Kerry Anne McGeary appeared first on Glass Frog Solutions.

This month we had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Kerry Anne McGeary at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Kerry Anne is an economist who transitioned from a more traditional academic research role into the role of program officer at the Foundation. She is great to chat with -- she is smart but sensible; she is a skilled and experienced researcher but knows how to get things done in the real world; and she cares about her work and its impact! We pick Kerry Anne's brain about how to measure and track impact when changes to health culture and behaviors take so long to unfold; how she uses her training as a researcher to inform her work for the Foundation; and the role that culture can play in shaping health behaviors. We enjoyed learning from Kerry Anne and, as usual, think you will, too!

This week, Jen and Rebecca chat about the role that empathy can play in program evaluation. This chat was inspired by a workshop the Glass Frog team held internally a few months ago to discuss what empathy is, its importance for our work, and how we can become more empathetic as evaluators, consultants, and colleagues. We enjoyed that workshop and felt like it helped our team talk through some of the ways in which we are not always as empathetic as we could be. Having this conversation improved our work, so we thought y'all might find it useful as well! As always, we appreciate you listening and would love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to ping us on the Contact Us page with your questions and thoughts!

This week, Jen and Rebecca chat about the role that empathy can play in program evaluation. This chat was inspired by a workshop the Glass Frog team held internally a few months ago to discuss what empathy is, its importance for our work, and how we can become more empathetic as evaluators, consultants, and colleagues. We enjoyed that workshop and felt like it helped our team talk through some of the ways in which we are not always as empathetic as we could be. Having this conversation improved our work, so we thought y'all might find it useful as well! As always, we appreciate you listening and would love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to ping us on the Contact Us page with your questions and thoughts! The post Empathy in Evaluation appeared first on Glass Frog Solutions.

Welcome back! This month we had the pleasure of talking with Kyrah Brown and Susan Wolfe about evaluating community collaboratives. We define what collaboratives are, Susan and Kyrah's approach to evaluating them, and some of the fun and challenging aspects of working with collaboratives. Kyrah and Susan are both trained as community psychologists, so they approach all of their work from that perspective. We learned a lot and we think you will, too, so give it a listen! If you are interested in learning more about Susan and Kyrah's work or about community psychology in general, here are some useful links: Susan's consulting business: Susan Wolfe and Associates Kyrah's research group: Maternal and Child Health Equity Research and Evaluation Team Society for Community Research and Action The Community Tool Box American Evaluation Association Topical Interest Group in Community Psychology

Welcome back! This month we had the pleasure of talking with Kyrah Brown and Susan Wolfe about evaluating community collaboratives. We define what collaboratives are, Susan and Kyrah's approach to evaluating them, and some of the fun and challenging aspects of working with collaboratives. Kyrah and Susan are both trained as community psychologists, so they approach all of their work from that perspective. We learned a lot and we think you will, too, so give it a listen! If you are interested in learning more about Susan and Kyrah's work or about community psychology in general, here are some useful links: Susan's consulting business: Susan Wolfe and Associates Kyrah's research group: Maternal and Child Health Equity Research and Evaluation Team Society for Community Research and Action The Community Tool Box American Evaluation Association Topical Interest Group in Community Psychology

We are thrilled to be back for our second season of the Glass Frog podcast! If you're new to the podcast, we started it as a way of both connecting with people who were doing interesting work and learning about new topics related to measurement and evaluation. Season 1 was a lot of fun and we're looking forward to doing it all over again in season 2! In the coming weeks, we'll talk about evaluating community collaboratives, health evaluation, the role of empathy in evaluation, and many more topics. The first episode of season 2 will drop Monday, August 5th. We chat with Kyrah Brown and Susan Wolfe about evaluating community collaboratives. We learned a lot from them and think you will, too! So please tune in! We'll continue to post episodes the first Monday of every month. They’ll be released through our website and on iTunes and Google Play, so please subscribe if you want to stay up to date each month.

We are thrilled to be back for our second season of the Glass Frog podcast! If you're new to the podcast, we started it as a way of both connecting with people who were doing interesting work and learning about new topics related to measurement and evaluation. Season 1 was a lot of fun and we're looking forward to doing it all over again in season 2! In the coming weeks, we'll talk about evaluating community collaboratives, health evaluation, the role of empathy in evaluation, and many more topics. The first episode of season 2 will drop Monday, August 5th. We chat with Kyrah Brown and Susan Wolfe about evaluating community collaboratives. We learned a lot from them and think you will, too! So please tune in! We'll continue to post episodes the first Monday of every month. They’ll be released through our website and on iTunes and Google Play, so please subscribe if you want to stay up to date each month.

Last month, we talked with Justin Rivers of The Character Connection Initiative and he shared with us a story about a survey his organization undertook in order to measure growth on student outcomes. You can listen to that episode to hear some of the things that went well and not-so-well, but one of our takeaways from that episode is how hard it is to do surveys well! In our work, we're constantly butting up against problems with how to design good questions, how to tailor surveys to the needs and backgrounds of the participants, and how to implement surveys in dynamic and non-controlled environments. (And, also, how to get people to take our darn surveys!) Who better to chat with than Sheila Robinson about all of our questions? Sheila and her colleague, Kim Firth Leonard, recently wrote a book called Designing Quality Survey Questions that, you guessed it, provides sound advice on how to design quality survey questions. We got to chat with Sheila about a few of our most pressing questions, including how balance the tension between creating really well-designed surveys and working within the time and budgetary constraints that many nonprofits have. We also chatted about response shift bias, using pre-validated versus original surveys, surveying hard-to-reach groups, and Rebecca's inability to say the word vignette (that pesky G!). Honestly, we really just scratched the surface. Sheila is a real wealth of knowledge and we're grateful to have had a chance to talk with her. This is our final episode of Season 1! The season finale everyone's been talking about! Rest assured, there are no cliff hangers, only gratitude for everyone who listened to the podcast this season. If you have ideas for future episodes, please feel free to reach out to us via the Contact Us page of our website. We would love to hear your suggestions. In the meantime, have a wonderful holiday season, if this is when you celebrate your holidays. Check back with us in the spring when we kick off season 2! Until then!

Last month, we talked with Justin Rivers of The Character Connection Initiative and he shared with us a story about a survey his organization undertook in order to measure growth on student outcomes. You can listen to that episode to hear some of the things that went well and not-so-well, but one of our takeaways from that episode is how hard it is to do surveys well! In our work, we're constantly butting up against problems with how to design good questions, how to tailor surveys to the needs and backgrounds of the participants, and how to implement surveys in dynamic and non-controlled environments. (And, also, how to get people to take our darn surveys!) Who better to chat with than Sheila Robinson about all of our questions? Sheila and her colleague, Kim Firth Leonard, recently wrote a book called Designing Quality Survey Questions that, you guessed it, provides sound advice on how to design quality survey questions. We got to chat with Sheila about a few of our most pressing questions, including how balance the tension between creating really well-designed surveys and working within the time and budgetary constraints that many nonprofits have. We also chatted about response shift bias, using pre-validated versus original surveys, surveying hard-to-reach groups, and Rebecca's inability to say the word vignette (that pesky G!). Honestly, we really just scratched the surface. Sheila is a real wealth of knowledge and we're grateful to have had a chance to talk with her. This is our final episode of Season 1! The season finale everyone's been talking about! Rest assured, there are no cliff hangers, only gratitude for everyone who listened to the podcast this season. If you have ideas for future episodes, please feel free to reach out to us via the Contact Us page of our website. We would love to hear your suggestions. In the meantime, have a wonderful holiday season, if this is when you celebrate your holidays. Check back with us in the spring when we kick off season 2! Until then!

Did you know that almost two-thirds of reporting public charities in the U.S. have an annual budget that is less than $500,000? (We learned that from Social Startup Success.) There are a lot of small organizations out there and it's tough to do evaluation when you're a one or two (wo)man show. In this episode, we chat with Justin Rivers, founder of The Character Connection Initiative (TCCI), a character education program serving the NYC region. Justin is a former middle school teacher and spent time as the lead educator for a character education nonprofit before starting his own organization. We chat about that transition in this episode, as well as how his experiences using and teaching character education in the classroom helped him see its value. We also chat with Justin about TCCI's approach to program evaluation, and the challenges he's faced along the way. Justin was an absolute pleasure to talk to. We would be remiss if we didn't also mention that he's kind of a Renaissance Man. In addition to being an entrepreneur and educator, he's also a playwright, tour guide, and graphic novelist. (What have you done today?) You can check out some of his cool side gigs here, here, and here. In the intro, we offer two quick footnotes for this episode. First, since we recorded the episode, TCCI hired an executive director. Her name is Sarah Beth Lardie. You’ll hear us talk about how Justin is both the founder and interim E.D. That's no longer the case, which is a big milestone for TCCI! The second footnote is that this conversation with Justin was actually the first podcast episode we’d ever recorded! So if the recording sounds cruddy and we sound awkward, that is why. It may not be the high quality production you've come to expect out of the Glass Frog Podcast ;) This is our penultimate episode for season 1. We'll be back next month with our final episode when we pepper Sheila Robinson with all of our questions about survey design. We hope you'll tune in. If you have a minute, subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, Google Podcasts, or TuneIn. If you need to find us in any of the directories, you can search for "Glass Frog" (two words). Until next time!

Did you know that almost two-thirds of reporting public charities in the U.S. have an annual budget that is less than $500,000? (We learned that from Social Startup Success.) There are a lot of small organizations out there and it's tough to do evaluation when you're a one or two (wo)man show. In this episode, we chat with Justin Rivers, founder of The Character Connection Initiative (TCCI), a character education program serving the NYC region. Justin is a former middle school teacher and spent time as the lead educator for a character education nonprofit before starting his own organization. We chat about that transition in this episode, as well as how his experiences using and teaching character education in the classroom helped him see its value. We also chat with Justin about TCCI's approach to program evaluation, and the challenges he's faced along the way. Justin was an absolute pleasure to talk to. We would be remiss if we didn't also mention that he's kind of a Renaissance Man. In addition to being an entrepreneur and educator, he's also a playwright, tour guide, and graphic novelist. (What have you done today?) You can check out some of his cool side gigs here, here, and here. In the intro, we offer two quick footnotes for this episode. First, since we recorded the episode, TCCI hired an executive director. Her name is Sarah Beth Lardie. You’ll hear us talk about how Justin is both the founder and interim E.D. That's no longer the case, which is a big milestone for TCCI! The second footnote is that this conversation with Justin was actually the first podcast episode we’d ever recorded! So if the recording sounds cruddy and we sound awkward, that is why. It may not be the high quality production you've come to expect out of the Glass Frog Podcast ;) This is our penultimate episode for season 1. We'll be back next month with our final episode when we pepper Sheila Robinson with all of our questions about survey design. We hope you'll tune in. If you have a minute, subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, Google Podcasts, or TuneIn. If you need to find us in any of the directories, you can search for "Glass Frog" (two words). Until next time!

In this episode, we chat with fellow evaluator Kylie Hutchinson about her new book Evaluation Failures: 22 Tales of Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned, which was released in September. Kylie is the principal consultant and founder of Community Solutions, a planning and evaluation firm in British Columbia. She chats with us about her reasons for writing the book, the importance of learning from our failures, and her own experiences as a professional evaluator. Also, spoiler alert: Kylie confesses that she doesn't spend her time listening to podcasts about program evaluation and claims that she would only tune in to another podcast episode if it included a true crime narrative presented in the style of Serial. Challenge accepted, Ms. Hutchinson.