|
¨ I’m
reviewing Veterans Helping Veterans Now proposal and they mention that they attended your Learning Circles workshop in Boulder
and that they now utilizing that method in quarterly meetings with veterans, family members, veteran service providers and
community members to gather information about the unmet needs of vets and their families in Boulder. The Learning Circles
approach is working well for them and they specifically wanted to pass on their thanks to you! -- Michelle Sturm,
Senior Program Officer, Anschutz Family Foundation ¨ Our Technical Assistant, Alexandra
Mitchell, has guided us through a number of changes in the last six months and has been a very valuable resource in our ongoing
efforts in strategic planning. With Alex's encouragement for more involvement, that engagement is really beginning to materialize.
Our Board is regularly offering ideas and suggestions as well as the questions attendant to their stewardship. This hands
on experience by all program Directors, senior management and our Board has likely been a personal growth experience as well.
I believe the most useful aspect of our technical assistance came
with the realization that this project was "ours" to do. It was Alex's continued reinforcement of that fact that
has helped everyone to really engage. -- James Davis, Area Agency on Aging Director, South Central Council of
Governments
¨ I
wanted to send you a link to the Philanthropy and Rural America issue that includes your op ed! It’s a great piece and I can’t thank you both (Alex Mitchell and Jeff Pryor) enough
for taking the time to write about this very important issue. Your time and insights are greatly appreciated. Just so you know, TAI was delivered electronically to over 25,000 grantmakers. -- Sarita Venkat, Manager of External Communications, Council on
Foundations
¨ Thanks
so much for all you have done with Elizabeth and CSF to bring so many of these issues to the forefront. I felt the time well
spent, and you’ve obviously put a tremendous amount of work, wisdom, and personal expertise toward the effectiveness
of these sessions [Foundation Learning Circles] for all sixty-seven Foundations. I look forward to the report, and to the
opportunity to continue to gain significant insight and information from your research and consulting efforts. -- Tom Stanton, Executive Director, The Bernard and Audre
Rapoport Foundation
¨ You are a treasure and a genius. Thank you, thank you. -- Lucille DiDomenico, Executive Director, Conference of Southwest
Foundations.
¨ I used pieces of your exercise and it worked beautifully [for developing a theory of
change for health empowerment in Myanmar]. Program staff were very pleased with the results -- seeing their work first
on the wall on large cards, then rearranged on the floor, and finally on one page and making lots of connections. So,
many, many thanks for your suggestions. -- Ana Coghlan, Ph.D., Regional Advisor with Asia and Eurasia Monitoring,
Evaluation, Reporting and Learning (MERL) in
Bangkok, Thailand.
¨
In the 13 years that I’ve been with the Center
for African American Health, I’ve worked with a number of technical assistance providers and none have been better.
The expert knowledge and training, mentoring and coaching through the entire process has been invaluable. The technical assistance
provided has been essential in helping to continually move ahead in all areas of our program development. Alex functions as
a coach, guidance counselor, researcher, sounding board and expert in the area of evaluation. Understanding what each person
needs allows us to work together as a team - working in tandem to get objectives accomplished. -- David Washington,
Special Initiatives Director, The Center for African American Health
¨ Alex, thanks for following-up on your presentation at Steamboat. In retrospect, I think I got the most out
of your presentation with Mark. Thank you for the resources and opportunity to learn and better my organization throught these
valuable tools. -- Jen Giacomini, Executive Director, Grand County Rural Health Network.
¨ Alex
was a critical contributor to the organization because of her evaluation expertise, her excellent communication skills, her
knowledge of and sensitivity to cultural competency issues, her career-long experience with community-based organizations,
and her top-notch organizational skills. As a consultant, Alex provides grantees technical assistance in evaluation, data
collection, organizational capacity growth, board development and strategic planning. The initiatives’ 20 grantees range
greatly in sophistication, and Alex’s assigned subset began as particularly challenging. She has served them with aplomb,
creating knowledge and awareness where resistance and vacuums existed before. Alex is highly respected by both her fellow
technical assistance providers as well as grantee agency personnel, and is regularly sought out for guidance and technical
expertise in research and evaluation. Beyond Alex’s proficiencies and considerable creative energy, I highly recommend
her because she is a pleasure to work with – reliable, thoughtful, and absolutely dedicated. -- Wendy
M. DuBow, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate, National Research Center
¨ Our goal at the Council on Foundations is to promote effective and
responsible philanthropy. One of the things we recognize is that good governance is so inherently connected with both legal
compliance and best practices. Legal compliance is easy because there is a clear baseline. In terms of best practices and
effectiveness, the connection isn’t as clear, but strong governance practices are critical to that. We know anecdotally
what strong governance looks like and how it changes organizations, and we do these speeches, but we started asking ourselves,
“How are we going to know if we’ve been successful?” So that’s what inspired the study. At least in
this particular region [Conference of Southwest Foundations], we now have some sort of benchmark. It would be great if we
had it in every region of the country, but we don’t. So that’s just this incredibly useful tool to build on. --
Andrew Schultz, Deputy Counsel, Council on Foundations ¨ Alexandra
has shown excellent skill in establishing rapport and strong working relationships with people on all levels of the organizations
she works with. She is dedicated in her commitment to providing high quality, competent services and does so
in a manner that meets the unique needs and dynamics of each organization. She has successfully guided each of her assigned
organizations through organizational challenges created by such things as staff turnover, strained relationships between board
members, and/or lack of effective internal systems. Key informant interviews conducted as part of the initiative
evaluation at the halfway point of the project showed a high level of satisfaction with the work Alexandra has done with these
grantee organizations, and there has been significant improvement in the areas of organizational capacity that have been addressed.
-- Jana Smith, Ph.D., Health Aging Director, Tri-County Health Department ¨
Throughout Alex’s involvement, she demonstrated a unique ability to
engage the staff in learning – stretching their skill set to collect data and conduct effective interviews with clients.
Alex has a commitment to developing internal capacity of organizations, so that they will continue to progress after her involvement
is over. I have consistently found Alex’s work to be of the highest quality, and have received excellent feedback from
the client organizations she has worked with. Most importantly, Alex has wonderful people skills and demonstrates a high degree
of cultural competency with different linguistic and ethnic groups. Her communication skills are outstanding and she is an
easy person to work with and trust. Her writing is clear and concise and her research skills are solid. -- Rich
Wildau, Project Director, Spring Institute
for Intercultural Learning
¨
Thanks for all you do – it was great visiting with you and I always learn something new when I get to
be at your workshops. YOUR support, insight, structure and guidance made yesterdays’ workshop the success it was! --
Cleo C. Corsi-Zarr, Development and Education
Director, Senior Resource Development Agency
¨ We are very pleased with the expertise, enthusiasm, and rapport with Alex. She and the staff of the Tri-County
Health Department have been very instructive, gracious, and patient as we refined our objectives and work plan. The evaluation
session in Denver as well as ongoing assistance has had an impact agency-wide. Alex has also helped do some problem solving
with us when finding personnel to staff our rural programs was frustrating. Cultural competency concerns have been addressed
amidst this dilemma of reaching rural participants . . . The usefulness of learning new evaluation skills and being more clear
with measurable goals and objectives has had an impact upon program development, grant writing, and reporting. We are growing
into being more comfortable with new language and consistency of outcomes. -- Karen Akin, Program Coordinator,
Senior Resource Development Agency
¨ Alex – Bravo! You have a gift for transferring rather unwieldy information, long phones
calls and harried schedules into a cogent and compelling plan. It makes a lot of sense and I think it compliments the goal
and understanding that small group social and education interactions are the bedrock of CSF [Conference of Southwest Foundations]
membership. -- Maggie McCarthy, Director of Southwest Programs, The Rensselaerville Institute
¨
Alex Mitchell did a great job of facilitating and helping us complete an organizational
assessment in a reasonable amount of time. We were able to discuss the strengths and challenges of each area and then choose
the areas we needed to work on the most. Each department was held to a higher level of accountability just by going through
this process and a very important lesson that we all learned was what areas each of our programs could improve in. This has
already helped us become a stronger organization . . . Alex has been very easy to work with and has helped us every step of the way. Alex is easy
to reach and willing to help us with any issue. She gladly finds the resources that we request. She designed a technical assistance
plan that closely relates to the priorities outlined in the organizational capacity assessment. She has reviewed our new project
idea and given suggestions about how to approach the project in a strategic way and she has been wonderful at helping us develop
an evaluation system to measure our objectives. Alex also has good suggestions to help us display and use our data in a way
that is understandable. -- Alisha Hall, Resource Program Manager, Bent County Health
Care Center ¨
We are very pleased to be working with Alex.
She is a great facilitator and communicator as well as a very pleasant person who is able to give feedback in a positive and
encouraging way. It was a necessary learning experience for our staff of Program Directors to get together and verbalize as
well as visualize our organization in the different technical assistance categories. Personally I liked being able to see
the results of our surveys right then and there. I believe it was important to see what our staff agreed and disagreed on
as far as strengths and weaknesses and need for improvement in our organization. There is always room for improvement. --
Tina Wood, Area Agency on Aging Director, South Central Council of Governments
¨
Technical assistance has been very helpful as we go through a comprehensive
strategic planning process. Our organization did some strategic planning six years ago, but there was no organized plan
created. The data was essentially brainstorming notes that have been used to develop programs. The strategic planning we are
doing now is very organized and will result in a plan complete with department responsibilities and time lines. She has provided
us with a clear roadmap of our roles and activities to complete the strategic plan. We are improving in many areas of our
organization through the advice and information provided by Alex. -- Alisha
Hall, Resource Program Manager, Bent County Health Care Center
¨
Alex Mitchell has been very helpful with the technical assistance and greatly appreciated.
She has helped us address programmatic concerns as well as overall agency concerns. Alex has worked with our agency in developing
our measurement tools for newly funded, as well as existing programs. She has also offered ideas pertaining to strategic planning,
troubleshooting, board composition, capacity building and conflict resolution. The agency is just starting to see some minor
changes in the organization’s capacity, but we feel that major changes can be accomplished with Alex’s assistance
in 2009. -- Lourae King, Huerfano County Program Administrator, South Central Council of Governments
¨ Developing a Strategic Plan for the agency has been one of the greatest
and most neglected areas. Alexandra Mitchell had the skill to bring out our confidence, delegate, and divide tasks so that
this vital need could be completed. She was able to be an encourager to see that this document received local ownership and
pride. She will gently yet persistently hold the Board of Directors and staff leadership accountable to following up on the
needs and hopes elaborated during this process. -- Karen Akin, Program Coordinator, Senior Resource Development
Agency
¨
NAPSA has been consistently pleased with the prompt and highly professional level of work
done under this contract. NAPSA, the National Center on Elder Abuse, and the field of Adult Protective Services in general
have benefited greatly from the work being done. -- Joanne M. Otto, Executive Director, National Adult Protective
Services Association
¨
I learned how helpful evaluation can be. Their [Alex and other evaluators working with the
REFT Institute, Inc.] excellent observational skills, disciplinary knowledge and objective analysis were really helpful in
decision-making at every step along the way. -- Barbara
Kulton, Collaborative Leadership Challenge Lead Facilitator, Lundy Foundation
¨ Thank you for your commitment and dedication to our children. -- The Parents of
the Family Learning Center, San Juan Del Centro
|
