EVALUATION & LEARNING STRATEGY
Your work is complex.
Most evaluation pretends it isn’t.
We help foundations and nonprofits build the capacity to notice what’s changing, make meaning together, and respond with intention while the work is still unfolding.
You’re not lacking data. You’re working in environments where conditions shift, relationships matter, and the path forward is rarely obvious. What you need isn’t more measurement. It’s a better way to learn while the work is unfolding.
That’s what we help you build.
We partner with foundations, nonprofits, and collaborative initiatives to build adaptive learning capacity - the ability to notice what’s changing, make meaning together, and respond with intention before it’s too late to matter.
Every engagement is designed around your specific context, questions, and team. But the goal is always the same: to leave you more capable to learning, adapting, and navigating complexity than when we started.
Our Practice
Five capacities. One goal.
Each engagement is different. These capacities are always the same.
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01 - ORIENT
Begin with purpose
Understand context, relationships, and the questions that actually matter.
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02 - ATTEND
Learn to notice
Surface patterns, tensions, and signals before they become obvious.
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03 - MAKE SENSE
Make meaning together
Transform information into shared understanding through dialogue.
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04 - ADAPT
Respond with intention
Use learning in real time to refine strategy and make better decisions.
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05 - EMBED
Make it last
Build habits and structures so learning continues after we’re gone.
“Did it work?”
← most evaluation stops here
“What are we learning, and how do we use it?”
← this is where we begin
This shift changes everything - what you pay attention to, who participates, how insights become decisions, and what your organization becomes capable of over time.
Evaluation shouldn’t extract knowledge from organizations. It should strengthen their ability to generate and use it themselves.
ABOUT
Hi, I’m Laura.
I believe evaluation should help you learn, not just prove you did. For more than 15 years I’ve partnered with foundations, nonprofits, and collaborative initiatives to build the kind of learning that actually changes how organizations work.
My practice draws on social work, systems thinking, and participatory evaluation. And on the belief that the people closest to the work hold essential knowledge about how change happens.