Evaluating an initiative that helps low-wage workers step up:

Philanthropic foundations often need to step back and evaluate the programs they fund. When Grand Victoria Foundation, which funds Illinois organizations interested in economic and educational change, wanted to assess the impact of its six-year Workforce Development Initiative, it retained Millennia.

The Workforce Development Initiative works to train low-wage workers in the Central Illinois towns of Champaign-Urbana, Peoria-Pekin and Springfield and move them closer to economic self-sufficiency.

Workforce-training programs typically take two approaches. In the first, jobless individuals receive training for new occupations that pay better than their previous jobs. In the second approach, underemployed workers receive training and support in their current occupation so they can move up within their current organization or industry. Grand Victoria's Initiative focused on workers in the health care industry.

Drawing on its expertise in community and economic development, Millennia designed a participatory evaluation process and framework. Then working with the stakeholders in each of the three communities, Millennia identified a set of expected qualitative and quantitative outcomes. Millennia also tracked the data and prepared annual status reports, which allowed everyone to monitor the progress and make program corrections. It was also crucial that the information gathered be shared among the three sites.

Along the way, Millennia made sure Grand Victoria Foundation and the three evaluation sites received regular reports on participant outcomes. Another key feature of its work with Grand Victoria was site-monitoring done in collaboration with Foundation program officers.

But most important of all were the outcomes for the workers: 80 percent of them ended up making more money, many double than they had previously earned.