As a member of the Convive Collective ecosystem, I had the privilege of collaborating with the team on Phase 2 of the Laudes Developmental Evaluation (DE). The goal of this phase was to build upon the insights from existing reports and take a deeper dive into understanding the key outcomes and impacts of the foundation’s work. Through this, we aimed to uncover not just what changes were happening, but how and where these changes were occurring within the systems Laudes seeks to influence.

Working closely with both the Convive Collective and Laudes teams, we employed outcome harvesting techniques to review and analyze the available reports. Our objective was to pull out the most significant impacts and, from these, create compelling "stories of change." These stories would provide a narrative framework that not only communicated results but also illuminated the tactics and approaches employed by Laudes and its partners to drive meaningful change.

Once the key impacts were identified, we collaborated with program teams to refine and co-create these stories, ensuring they resonated with both the qualitative and quantitative data gathered. I conducted Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) with stakeholders, partners, and team members to enrich the stories with additional insights and validate the findings. This further grounded the stories in real-world experiences, highlighting the drivers of change and providing context to the challenges and successes encountered along the way.

After gathering and analyzing the data, I created a comprehensive PowerPoint presentation to share with the broader Laudes team during a sensemaking session. This presentation served as a critical tool for exploring how the individual program outcomes fed into the larger strategy of the foundation. It helped the team reflect on the tactics and approaches that contributed to success, as well as better understand where systemic change was taking place.

The results from this phase not only provided Laudes with clear, evidence-based stories of their impact but also informed both program-specific strategic planning and broader foundation-level discussions. This phase enabled Laudes and its partners to see more clearly where they were making a difference, while also help to feed into further discussions on refining their approaches to scale and deepen their impact moving forward.