Evaluation Services

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At Five Directions, we are committed to support nonprofit organizations do their very best work.

An essential ingredient of ‘best work’ is engaging in a reflective process that gives you insight into your organization’s strengths and challenges, and helps you discern the most effective next steps.

When you’re in the thick of your work, it’s not always easy to see what’s going on and you may not have time to devote to a designing and implementing a thorough evaluation process. That’s where we come in.

We offer both organization-wide and program-specific evaluation processes that provide invaluable data as you communicate with your funders, donors, and board of directors.

 

What’s Unique About Our Approach

We combine more than five decades of experience in qualitative research, ethnography, mindfulness practice, and on-the-ground work inside nonprofit organizations.

With academic and field training as cultural anthropologists, we are skilled at guiding people through a process that shines a light on organizational culture. Through our evaluation services, we offer perceptive insights that will help you to optimize your entire organization as well as individual programs.

Ethnography is a form of qualitative research that is designed to immerse the researcher as a participant-observer into the on-going lived experience, perspectives and understandings of members of a specific culture or group in order to learn from their individual and shared realities from the “inside-out.” Ethnographic research serves a variety of different purposes including the generation of new knowledge and theory building, diagnostic or clinical work, assessment and evaluation, policy formation, and advocacy or strategic research.

Additionally, we bring a unique perspective as longtime mindfulness practitioners. This ground of awareness informs all of our work and we love to help organizations integrate reflective practices into their culture to increase effectiveness.

 

Services

Using an array of qualitative research methods, we help you gain a better understanding of your audience and measure the impact of your work. These insights can be invaluable in planning for future programming and products, and making staffing decisions. Specifically, we offer:

  • Organization-wide evaluations, including ethnographic fieldwork
  • Program reviews
  • Staffing performance reviews
  • In-depth interviews with stakeholders, clients, and key personnel
  • Focus groups, open-ended interviews, and other methods that give you a holistic picture of how your constituents or customers benefit from your service or product
  • Survey design, administration, and analysis
  • Market research

 

About Us

 

FaithornPhotoDr. Lisa Faithorn

Dr. Faithorn works as an applied anthropologist, organizational consultant, and educator. She combines long-term experience in social scientific research and academic teaching with expertise in practical research applications, program and project management, and collaborative group facilitation. She has 30+ years experience as a leader of applied ethnographic research projects, seminars and trainings focused on program and project effectiveness, leadership and management skills, usability research, organizational culture, team dynamics, and the creation of effective distributed collaborative teams. From September, 2000 through September 2014 Dr. Faithorn worked as a Senior Researcher on a number of NASA-funded contracts.

Research and Evaluation Clients (selected list)

  • Alzheimer’s Association of the Greater San Francisco Bay Area
  • American Express
  • City Manager’s Office, City of Concord, California
  • College of Human Development and Community Service at California State University, Fullerton
  • NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute
  • NASA Astrobiology Institute
  • Pacific Bell
  • SUN Microsystems
  • University of California School of Nursing, San Francisco

Publications (selected list)

  • ISS Power Planning Process Mapping: Current, Near-Term and Future (with Catherine Adams) – June 2009 – project report
  • “Lessons learned from the NASA Astrobiology Institute”, (with Baruch Blumberg) Handbook of Research on Electronic Collaboration and Organizational Synergy, IGI Publications, Hershey, Pennsylvania October, 2008
  • NASA Astrobiology Institute Communications/Collaborations Needs Assessment, April 2002
  • “Managing in an Age of Discontinuous Change”, Aspen’s Advisor for Nurse Executives, 11:5, January 1996, pp. 1-6
  • “The Organization as Culture: A Look at PacBell’s Effort at Organizational Culture Change,”Vision/Action, March 1988, pp. 2-6

 

maiaMaia Duerr, MA

 

Research and Evaluation Clients (selected list)

  • Academy for the Love of Learning
    • Buddhist Peace Fellowship
  • Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
  • Context-Based Research
  • Public Health Institute
  • University of California San Francisco/Osher Institute
  • Upaya Zen Center

 

Publications (selected list)

  • “Assessing the State of Contemplative Practices in the U.S.,” article in Contemplation Nation: How Ancient Practices are Changing the Way We Live. Published by the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, June 2011
  • “The Contemplative Organization,” in Journal of Organizational Change Management, February 2004
  • “A Powerful Silence: The Role of Meditation and Other Contemplative Practices In American Life and Work,” Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, 2004
  • “Inviting the World to Transform: Nourishing Social Justice Work with Contemplative Practice,” Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, 2003
  • “Survey of Transformative and Spiritual Dimensions of Higher Education,” co-authored with Arthur Zajonc and Diane Dana, in Journal of Transformative Education, July 2003.