Planning & Research
Strategic plans that survive contact with a calendar, and the research and evaluation that tell you whether they worked. For nonprofits, universities, agencies, and districts.
Giving growth for a nonprofit client in one year
Years our data lead has spent on evaluation and surveys
A Plan Without a Mechanism Is a Document.
Most organizations we meet have already done a strategic plan. It sits in a shared drive. Everyone agreed with it and nobody uses it, because the retreat produced priorities but not routines, owners, or a review cadence.
The other half of the problem is evidence. Leaders are asked whether a program is working and have to answer from impression, because no one designed a way to find out. Then a funder asks for the same answer in writing.
We work on both halves. The plan gets a mechanism, and the mechanism gets a measure. For grant-funded research, that also means fidelity monitoring, so a funder can see the work ran as designed.
“They had a plan. What they did not have was a mechanism.”
The most common thing we find in a first conversation, across every sector we serve.
A working session in progress. Plans that get written on are the ones that get used.
Four Ways We Come In
Most engagements start with one of these and grow into a second. You can also buy any of them on its own.
Strategic Planning
A plan you will actually use, built with the people who have to run it. We facilitate the sessions, write the document, and build the routines that keep it alive after the retreat ends.
- Board and cabinet retreat facilitation
- Multi-year roadmaps with named owners and dates
- Quarterly review structures so progress is visible
Research & Data Analysis
We take the data you already have, or gather what you are missing, and turn it into something a board or a funder can act on.
- Needs assessments and landscape scans
- Research reports and white papers
- Data systems that make results easy to reuse
Program Evaluation
Independent evaluation that tells you what is working, what is not, and what to change. Written to satisfy a funder and useful enough that you would run it anyway.
- Logic models and evaluation frameworks
- Formative and summative evaluation
- Funder-ready reporting on grant deliverables
- Fidelity monitoring, so grant-funded research runs as designed
Survey Design & Deployment
Instruments that produce usable answers, from a staff climate survey to a statewide workforce study, with the analysis that makes sense of them.
- Instrument design and validation
- Deployment, follow-up, and response management
- Clear analysis without the jargon
Chart paper from a working session. The second question is the one most analysis skips, and it is usually where the real decision hides.
Senior Data & Evaluation Consultant
- Statewide surveys used by districts, agencies, and policymakers
- Evaluation redesign and data tracking systems
- Multi-year study of teacher recruitment and retention
Research Is Only Useful If Someone Can Act On It
Jennifer has spent more than fifteen years helping leaders make sense of their data and use it to strengthen programs. In a previous role she led statewide surveys that became the reference source for districts, agencies, and policymakers looking for reliable workforce analysis.
She has spent years examining teacher recruitment and retention across South Carolina, identifying what works, where the problems persist, and which strategies actually reduce turnover. She builds the tracking systems and rewrites the evaluation processes so the results are clearer and easier to reuse.
Her standard: insight over jargon, and data that feels genuinely useful to the people who have to act on it.
Planning work is rarely done in a small room. Getting a whole staff to the same understanding is most of the job, and it is where a plan either earns buy-in or quietly loses it.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Three engagements across three sectors, with the outcomes stated plainly.
Copper Circle
A volunteer-led Triangle nonprofit with real momentum and no written plan. We facilitated the board through a three-year strategic plan, then built the fundraising structure underneath it.
UNC Greensboro
The REACH Hub needed to know where its research support was landing and where it was not. We mapped research success across the institution and turned it into a plan the deans could act on.
Durham Public Schools
The district needed to know whether its leadership and instructional investments were changing outcomes, not just whether they had been delivered. We led the evaluation studies that answered it.
Richland Two School District
Seven schools identified for Additional Targeted Support and Improvement, and no shared approach across them. We built a multiyear roadmap with leadership routines underneath it.
Different Rules, Same Discipline
The method holds. What changes is the language, the governance, and who has to sign off.
Nonprofits & foundations
Strategic plans, board facilitation, and the evaluation your funders ask for.
Colleges & universities
Research support mapping, program review, and institutional data work.
Government & agencies
Needs assessments, statewide surveys, and independent program evaluation.
K-12 districts
Improvement roadmaps, ATSI and CSI planning, and student outcome analysis.
Project or Retainer, Your Choice
A single planning engagement or evaluation runs as a fixed-scope project with a flat price. Ongoing work runs as a retainer with a set number of hours that roll over across twelve months, so a quiet month is not wasted.
Nonprofits and businesses can engage us directly with a simple agreement. Public districts, universities, and agencies can purchase through a cooperative contract with no separate solicitation.
Tell Us What You Are Trying to Decide
Half an hour, no cost, no pitch deck. Bring the question you cannot answer yet and we will tell you what it would take to answer it.