B4: Building Grantee and Community Evaluative Capacity
Session description
Many community-based organizations lack the capacity to conduct comprehensive evaluations or view evaluation beyond the context of meeting funder requirements. Yet having real-time data to make improvements and ensure quality of programs is a key to their success. Both AIDS United and the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky are working to build learning capacity in their grantees and potential grantees by providing access to evaluation support and helping plan for evaluation capacity building. Hear from these grantmakers how they are effectively balancing the desire to fund programs that demonstrate measurable impact with providing resources to build community and grantee capacity.
Participant learning goals
• Understand how building a national evaluation learning community among a grantee cohort impacts grantee capacity to evaluate their work in ways that cannot happen when funded as a stand-alone project.
• Identify key components of a learning community model of support that strengthens and expands the grantees evaluation “tool box”.
Intended learning level
Exploration — exploration of ideas you’ve probably heard before in a way that builds further knowledge and understanding
Speakers
![[photo]](https://8ca84662c5b8f0cff50d-4baaaf97d63fd7b01243e1b1c57f0cc1.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/38/profile_aeca7c96a9e8b14cbb1bf2872ab0e77d.png "Margaret Jones, Center for Community Health and Evaluation, Group Health Research Institute")
Margaret Jones, Center for Community Health and Evaluation, Group Health Research Institute
Web site
Speaker Biography
Margaret Jones is a senior program manager at the Center for Community Health and Evaluation, part of the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle, Wash. She is currently managing several of CCHE’s evaluation projects, including evaluations of Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky initiatives, the Specialty Care Initiative evaluation co-funded by California HealthCare Foundation and Kaiser Permanente, and development of the Healthcare Georgia Foundation’s Evaluation Resource Center. Jones’ evaluation experience has focused on evaluation capacity building and evaluating initiatives related to community health improvement, health policy, health disparities and health equity, public health preparedness, public health training programs and clinical quality improvement.
![[photo]](https://8ca84662c5b8f0cff50d-4baaaf97d63fd7b01243e1b1c57f0cc1.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/39/profile_d4252214cb2b027bcf7a70af6e875608.png "Susan Zepeda, Foundation for a Health Kentucky")
Susan Zepeda, Foundation for a Health Kentucky
Web site
Speaker Biography
Susan G. Zepeda is president and CEO of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky. Before joining the foundation in 2005, she was the first CEO of The HealthCare Foundation for Orange County and director of the San Luis Obispo County Health Agency and CEO of that County’s General Hospital. Earlier, she was executive director of a consortium of nonprofit healthcare providers in Tucson, Ariz. Zepeda is on the board of the Kentucky Institute of Medicine. She holds degrees from Brown University, University of Arizona and International College, and has completed the CDC-sponsored Public Health Leadership Institute and Harvard University’s Program on Negotiation for Senior Executives
![[photo]](https://8ca84662c5b8f0cff50d-4baaaf97d63fd7b01243e1b1c57f0cc1.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/90/profile_7cd8d1de7811e1f986161f5de6272ee0.png "Susan Kinsky, Aids United")
Susan Kinsky, Aids United
Web site
Speaker Biography
Suzanne Kinsky is currently a program officer at AIDS United where she works on the Access to Care grantmaking initiative. One of her key responsibilities is overseeing many aspects of the Social Innovation Fund, which supports 10 innovative public-private partnerships to improve individual health outcomes and strengthen local services systems, connecting economically and socially marginalized individuals living with HIV to high quality supportive services and health care. Prior to coming to AIDS United, she worked for the Maryland AIDS Administration where she managed various aspects of the statewide Counseling, Testing, and Referral Program and conducted program evaluation for HIV prevention interventions targeting at-risk adults. Suzanne has also worked as the women’s services director at Our Place in Washington, DC. In addition, she spent two years working as a program coordinator with the Washington AIDS Partnership, one of AIDS United’s Community Partners. While serving as a Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellow with the Congressional Hunger Center, Suzanne worked with RESULTS, a grassroots citizen lobby, on issues of welfare reform and anti-poverty initiatives, including Individual Development Accounts (IDAs). Suzanne holds a master’s in public health and a certificate in health education from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Cornell University.