OUR WORK
The SEP: A roadmap for generating the evidence you need
A Strategic Evidence Plan (SEP) can show you a clear path to the outcomes you envision.
What are the answers you need?
Our experience has shown us that most every social sector organization struggles to answer these three fundamental questions:
- How can we understand and improve the impact of our work for vulnerable communities?
- How should we prioritize program investments and activities given our limited resources?
- Should we expand our program to reach additional participants or communities?
These are some of the big and important questions that a Strategic Evidence Plan (SEP) will help you answer. It’s your unique roadmap for continuous evidence building and program improvement, offering you detailed guidance and concrete recommendations.
How your plan comes together
Our interdisciplinary team will partner with you to create your plan. We’ll provide facilitation, guidance, and expertise to develop your customized roadmap. The graphic below shows a simplified outline of the continuous process.
Prior to the Strategic Evidence Planning process, we undertake an exploration phase to ensure we have the right team and framing for the engagement.
- Define Vision & Goals: Clarify and prioritize the ways in which data and evidence can accelerate organization strategy and outcomes.
- Review Context & Capacity: Use in-depth interviews, focus groups, and document review to understand internal capacity and external context, including current assets and gaps in tools, data, technology, or talent
- Develop Roadmap: Apply learning from assessment to delineate investments and actions needed to achieve goals, including staffing, operations, policy, and learning recommendations
A clear SEP roadmap means you’ll not only have a clear understanding of how to continuously improve, but also the opportunity and language to align with funders around outcomes.
After the Strategic Evidence Planning engagement, we have teams available to support implementation of elements of the plan, as appropriate, if additional capacity is needed.
EVIDENCE IN ACTION
See how nonprofits are using the SEP
