Relationships with most of our community partners extend over multiple years, which provides continuity and depth to the evaluation. We are thankful for our dedicated community partners. We appreciate their openness to evaluation and their desire to use evidence in making decisions. We believe the children, youth, and families of our community are the real beneficiaries.
“The amount of communication was ideal throughout all of our many projects. When I had a request, they promptly took care of it for me. All of the products that were produced were high quality and useful to us and our partners.” – NE DHHS Drug Overdose Prevention program
“I appreciated the team’s quick work to get the project moving, especially as they were aware of our tight timeline. The evaluators asked questions and made suggestions to ensure that they understood what we were wanting. The team adapted methods quickly be accommodating of social distancing. The overall quality of work was good, and I appreciate that the assessment was structured according to requirements per our funders. This organization made it easy for us to ensure all bases were covered…The team was exceptionally professional, and the partnership was productive.” – Heather Loughman, Community Action Partnership of Lancaster and Saunders Counties
“Everyone involved at STEPs were so patient, helpful, and flexible during this whole process. It has been excellent to work with you all…I personally learned a lot while working with STEPs–a lot about how my organization works, how evaluation work is most successfully communicated, and that it is okay to reach out and ask questions even if you are supposed to be the resident expert.” – Kelly Shaw-Sutherland, Legal Aid Nebraska
“Everyone listened to the needs of the organization as expressed by the Executive Director, to make the appropriate decisions that would best provide evidence - enthusiastic about learning about the organization - passionate about their work and what it means to support the organization - Wonderful to work with as a community organization!” – Melissa Wurth, Omaha Girls Rock
“You really get what we’re doing!”
“We love the measurement tool report!”
“Of all the evaluators we’ve worked with, this is the first time that evaluation makes sense to us!”
“The evaluators are good listeners. They met with staff frequently and that helped alleviate any fear of evaluation... It was particularly helpful that the evaluators came across not with clipboards and checklists but with open eyes and ears.” – Dr. Jef Johnston, Avenue Scholars Foundation.
"I look forward to meetings with the STEPs program evaluation team! - it's always the pick-me-up meeting of the week!" – Treva Haugaard, The GOALS Center.
“[The evaluators] were extremely professional, diligent, dedicated, and easy to work with... I would highly recommend Jeanette and her team to anyone looking for assistance with program evaluation.”
“The evaluators did exactly what we asked. We then discovered how we wanted to change what we evaluated. We look forward to working with the evaluators in this realm.”
“The STEPs team did a wonderful job engaging a new agency into a program evaluation process. The STEPs team is very engaging and easy to work with. They often went above and beyond and were able to explain complex topics to the agency staff who had less knowledge in the area of program evaluation. They made the program evaluation process easy and comfortable.” – Treva Haugaard, The GOALS Center
“There is an effective working relationship. I do not hesitate to contact them with ideas, suggestions, concerns, etc. I have seen that they do listen to us through the results of their work.” – Corrie Kielty, Nebraska CASA Association
“Doing evaluation right is not easy, but you and your team are making it doable and that will strengthen the Omaha community in the long run. Thank you for your vision, passion and commitment to quality evaluation in our community.” – Julie Kalkowski, Financial Success Program
“It has been great working with STEPs. The staff are knowledgeable about program evaluation and are helpful in addressing our program’s needs and timeline. STEPs’ program is a critical/essential component to our work.”
“Working with the STEPs team … has offered P4K a baseline for future analysis of its programming. It was fascinating to be a part of the internal discussions this theory of change launched, proving a platform for all program planning moving forward.” – Sue Lipsey, Partnership 4 Kids
“Thank you for a jam‐packed and wonderful overview of evaluation and assessment.” – a training participant
“I feel quite proud to have STEPs in our community!” – Heather Bird, Heartland Family Service