The Elevate Journal
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The Importance of Measuring Collaborative Health
Collaboration moves at the speed of trust. For collaboratives working toward systems change, trust is essential to building shared goals, strategies, and processes. While it can be tempting to jump straight into the work, establishing trust and measuring collaborative health are critical to long-term success. So, how can collaboratives build trust and assess their health?
Building a Public-Private Collaborative Structure to Better Connect the Housing Ecosystem of Nashville
Nashville needs an estimated 90,000 more homes over the next decade, and meeting that need takes a coordinated effort. Elevate is proud to partner with the Unified Housing Leadership Council (UHLC), a cross-sector collaborative of 20 leaders working to advance the city's Unified Housing Strategy. Alongside the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, and UHLC leadership, we've co-designed the collaborative's committee structure and facilitate ongoing meetings that keep the work aligned and moving forward, building a strong foundation for lasting, systems-level change.
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: A Collaborative Infrastructure Design Blueprint
One of the core tenants of healthy collaborative work is effective decision-making: Who gets to decide how resources flow? Who sets policies and determines which causes deserve advocacy? Is the backbone organization responsible for making all decisions? How can you ensure representation for all voices in a manner that reflects the spirit of your collaborative entity or coalition?
Connecting Organizational Strategy with Impact Measurement
As part of the strategic planning process, the West End Home Foundation team and board needed clear priorities for their data and evaluation that were directly linked to their core strategies. The Strategic Impact Map was the perfect tool for the job. We facilitated the staff through the process, offering our evaluation expertise and integrating their expertise in the work at each step.
Youth-Led Research in Action
In the summer of 2018, the Nashville Opportunity Youth Collaborative (OYC) partnered with Elevate to engage young people directly in the research process. Using a youth participatory action research (YPAR) approach, members of the OYC’s Youth Leadership Team helped design and carry out the project from start to finish. The findings from this process informed the overall strategic direction of the OYC’s work.
Moving from Subjects to Partners: Why Participatory Research Methods Matter
Moving from “studying people” to “studying with people” can be a game-changer for enhancing the quality and relevance of your data.
In traditional evaluation, the researcher is often seen as the “expert” — the specialist looking through a glass at a program’s participants. Participatory Research Methods (PRMs) flip that script: Instead of treating people as passive data points, PRMs involve stakeholders — the very people affected by a program — as active partners in the research process.
Sharpening Your Lens: Defining Your Evaluation Focus
At its core, defining your evaluation focus means pinpointing the specific questions your evaluation aims to answer. It's about narrowing down the vast landscape of your program's (or your organization’s) activities and outcomes to a manageable, meaningful scope. Instead of trying to evaluate everything, you're strategically identifying what aspects are most critical to examine given your resources, staff capacity, timeline, and the needs of your stakeholders.
2025: Our Year So Far
Despite swimming backwards, against the tide, in the toxic soup, we at Elevate are grateful for all the ways our partners, clients, and friends have shown up this year for themselves, others, and us. It’s a testament to the resiliency of nonprofit leaders that even though things have been extraordinarily challenging, you’ve still found ways to lead thoughtfully, strategically, and intentionally.
Strategy for Systems Change: How to Build Strategy for Collaboratives and Coalitions
This is the third post in our series on strategy for programs, organizations, and communities. If you've been following along, you’ve probably noticed a theme: designing a strong strategy looks pretty similar regardless of the size or complexity of the effort. Whether you're working on a single program or leading a cross-sector coalition, it comes down to the same core elements—gathering good information, setting clear goals and actions, and making space to learn and adapt as you go.
Strategy for Organizations: Relevant, Actionable, and Flexible Planning
This post is the second in our series on strategy for programs, organizations, and communities. In our first post, we explored what it looks like to apply strategic thinking at the program level—clarifying goals, aligning activities, and measuring what matters. Now, we’re zooming out to the organizational level: What is strategy, really? And how do you build a plan that helps your whole organization stay focused, aligned, and adaptive?
The Elevate Playbook: Smarter Data + Better Strategy = Meaningful Change
Over the past eight years, we’ve built and refined tools, frameworks, and approaches to support both, working with programs, organizations, and collaboratives to put them into action. We want to share what we’ve learned with you.
Elevate’s Reflections from Recent Conferences
October has been a busy month for Elevate! Many members of our team attended both the TN Nonprofit Conference in Memphis, TN, and the AEA Evaluation Conference in Portland, OR. They made lots of connections, learned and unlearned things, and they’re excited to share their takeaways!
8 Learnings for 8 Years
This month marks eight years since we started Elevate. We were three young professionals with a shared vision who saw a need in the sector, so we jumped in—armed with ambition and plenty of coffee. Over the years, we’ve poured long hours into this work, celebrating wins, tackling tough challenges, and staying true to our core value: learning. In that spirit, we took some time to reflect on what’s brought us here. Here are a few lessons we’ve picked up along the way.
Rediscover Elevate: Get to Know Us and Explore Our New Services!
Let us reintroduce ourselves! Elevate Consulting is a full-service firm dedicated to supporting nonprofits, collaborative community groups, foundations, and municipalities in designing and implementing smart, efficient strategies and programs that improve their community. We are here to help you and your organization live out your mission and drive equitable social change in the world.
Are Focus Groups Still Relevant in Program Evaluation? Understanding Their Value and Effectiveness
In the ever-evolving landscape of program evaluation, focus groups have long been a staple for gathering qualitative insights. As we navigate a world filled with digital distractions and shifting preferences, the question arises: Are focus groups still an effective tool for program evaluation? Let’s explore what focus groups are, when they should be used in program evaluation, and their current effectiveness.
Community Engagement: What, When, How, and Why?
Community engagement, rooted in civic engagement principles and community organizing, has evolved significantly. Its importance has grown across the nonprofit, public, and private sectors, leading to varied experiences, definitions, and interpretations.
Enhancing Survey Accessibility
Several of West End Home Foundation's funded partners serve older adults who are blind or have limited vision. This challenged us and our partners at WEHF to consider ways to make our online survey more accessible to these individuals. We haven’t arrived at a perfect solution yet, but here are some strategies we’ve learned about that can make online survey data collection more approachable for individuals who are blind.
We Just Learned a Lesson – How Do We Not Forget?
While most of the thought around learning begins and ends in school, our ability and necessity to learn carries us through the rest of our lives. Because we are taught at such a young age to retain so much information, it can get tricky understanding what to keep and what to forget (I know I don’t remember a lot of the things I learned in school). As we grow and change, the necessity for a mental rolodex of dates, relationships, professional development information, songs, books, etc. increases while the proverbial room in our minds stays the same. How do we keep this information safe and readily accessible? How do we know what information is not necessary to keep on standby?