Evaluation & Assessment

We take a practical, useful and implementable approach to evaluation and assessment. We help organizations and initiatives define their desired impact, and identify measurable, useful indicators that will help leaders and teams see if outcomes are being achieved.

We help organizations and initiatives think through how they are making an impact and identify what assumptions they may be making. We help visualize and articulate these insights by creating theories of change, logic models, and other models that show the relationship of actions to outcomes.

We support process, outcomes, and goals-based evaluation efforts that focus on feedback from stakeholders through focus groups, surveys, interviews and observation. We analyze existing data sources, and provide insights from secondary research through useful reporting mechanisms.

We design evaluation processes and develop evaluation plans that work within the existing capabilities of your organization, and focus on asking the right questions to elicit useful and actionable insights. We also help you develop a dashboard of useful information to track at-a-glance, and to be able to communicate progress to board members, funders, and other stakeholders.

We support baseline assessments, helping to suss out where your efforts are today to inform where you are headed as you implement a new program, strategic direction or collective action effort.

If we are not the right match for your evaluation needs based on scale or design rigor, we will recommend partners who can meet your needs.

Get in touch today and let us know how we can help strengthen, measure and communicate your impact.

Evaluation and Reporting Offerings

  • Baseline assessments
  • Practical evaluation plans
  • Theories of change, logic models, and other visual representations of impact
  • Evaluation design and implementation supports, including process, goals, and outcomes-based evaluations
  • Continuous improvement plans and methods
  • Secondary research reports and situational analyses
  • Stakeholder feedback methods, including focus groups, world-cafe style conversations, town halls, surveys, and interviews

Leadership Development & Executive Coaching

Organizations and initiatives thrive because of their people. Developing, supporting and renewing the skills and capacities of leaders and teams is a critical goal for Mission Spark.

Social impact jobs are both rewarding and stressful. Mission Spark can help support team members to show up as their best selves, renewed and ready for the work ahead. We support individuals, executive teams, and organizational leadership, including critical relationships between CEOs and board chairs.

Mission Spark partners with our clients to develop strong leaders, build strong teams, strengthen organizational cultures, and help organizations through challenging situations.

Our services include individual coaching, team coaching, team building,  board development, leadership development, succession planning, and managing transitions.

Coaching strengthens the individuals leading your organizations, allowing you to serve to your full professional potential, avoiding burnout, maintain balance in your life and realizing personal fulfillment.

Your coach will ask you tough and powerful questions to deepen your self-awareness and your ability to deal with uncertainty and other difficult situations, within your organizational culture and in life.

Your coach will listen to you, work on your agenda and address the issues that are most salient to you. This method is designed to elicit your natural skills, resourcefulness, and creativity. Your coach will help you to develop an action plan or set of steps that help further your goals, and supports you in achieving them. Your coach can also help provide consultative insights on tough organizational challenges.

in a team environment, coaching assists with helping a team set its shared goals and vision, and assisting individuals in seeing how dynamics are playing out. In addition, supportive tools and creative processes to assist a team to strengthen its work together are provided.

Get in touch today and let us know how we can help.

Leadership Development & Executive Coaching Offerings

  • Developing next generation leaders as they navigate their career pathways and develop leadership skills
  • Developing and providing coaching supports to executive directors and CEOs, including first-time executive directors
  • Coaching and facilitating shared vision and outcomes for executive teams
  • Supporting high functioning teams by assisting with ongoing dynamics or points of conflict, and providing supportive tools and structures
  • Staff evaluations, including executive director assessments
  • Managing executive transitions and developing and managing succession plans and transitions
  • Building effective boards and developing strong board-staff partnerships
  • Identifying and building healthy organizational cultures and supportive structures
  • Leadership retreats and trainings

Facilitation & Training

We help clients develop organizational and collective structures that are robust and flexible enough not only to resolve current issues but also to anticipate future ones.

In helping organizations enhance their sustainability, Mission Spark’s consultants work through a lens of adaptive capability.  Facilitation and skills building are two primary ways we help strengthen social impact efforts.

Mission Spark provides expert facilitation and process design to engage the many stakeholders who help make your organization or effort impactful. We do not shy away from conflict or complexity, and are often brought in to help support organizations wrestle with challenging efforts in service of greater results.

Mission Spark cares about systems-level impact, and seeks opportunities to facilitate collective impact efforts. We facilitate collaboratives, boards, stakeholder gatherings, and staff teams through creative and engaging processes. We help groups gain greater clarity, reach collective decisions, and establish shared visions.

We also help build the capabilities and skills of teams, collectives, and boards through interactive trainings and talks on a wide variety of topics that support the strategy, culture and operations of social impact organizations and collective action efforts.

Our trainings are supported by best practice and innovative methods, and include materials and tools. Trainings are often combined with other mission spark services as part of implementation or preparation efforts for strategic shifts.

Get in touch today and let us know how we can help.

Facilitation and Training Offerings

Facilitations

  • World-cafe style feedback processes
  • Focus groups
  • Designing learning processes
  • Cultural shifts
  • Innovation opportunities
  • Strategy development
  • Collective visioning

Trainings

  • Design for learning
  • Shift your organization’s culture
  • Fail Better: design smart mistakes to succeed sooner
  • Building more resilient and innovative social impact organizations
  • Building strong boards
  • Board roles and responsibilities
  • Conflict mediation for boards and staff
  • The talent challenge: building, supporting and retaining effective teams
  • Design for impact: launching a new program
  • Sustainable business models
  • Developing effective strategic plans
  • Supporting collective action
  • From action to outcomes: program evaluation

Other custom offerings and processes are available by request.

Strategic Consulting

We partner with organizations to solidify a vision for their future, identify priorities, set goals for measurable results, and develop flexible and supported implementation plans.

Mission Spark’s consultants can help your organization multiply the effectiveness of your efforts, especially while navigating change, thereby advancing your organization’s mission impact.

Successful organizations are adaptable, have identified goals and priorities, and think deliberately about their future. Through our strategy development and planning services, we partner with organizations to solidify a strong path to a high impact and sustainable future.

When working with organizations on strategy development, business planning, or strategic planning, we meet organizations and initiatives where they are, and focus on small wins and achievable steps in the near term, building towards greater mission impact.

Through creative facilitated processes, we help boards and staff to develop a focused vision, a clear mission, and guiding values. From this values-driven place, we help organizations determine their strategic orientation, set results-driven goals, and become more adaptable and resilient.

We help organizations achieve their goals through developing flexible operational planning that are always tied to measurable outcomes and thoughtfully consider your organization’s unique assets and constraints.

Rely on Mission Spark’s consultants for planning and strategy development based on innovative thought, strong foundational research, and creative ideas, not fill-in-the-blank templates.

Get in touch today and let us know how we can help.

Strategic Consulting Offerings

  • Defining and aligning vision, mission, and core values
  • Identifying business strategy and business models
  • Engaging your partners, clients, and community members in shaping your future
  • Developing thorough situational analyses and organizational assessments to support understanding of current state and to inform strategic decision making
  • Developing results-driven, flexible strategic plans
  • Benchmarking for successful operations
  • Creating adaptive organizations and initiatives
  • Developing and structuring collaborative relationships
  • Supporting strategic design and implementation of collective action efforts
  • Design and early implementation of programs