By: Jessica Brown (Director of Operations)
ECS is an evaluation and technical assistance firm that helps community-based organizations, health departments, schools, and others tell their stories. In today’s instant-gratification society, it’s more important than ever to tell your story and share your data in a way that all people can read and understand. That’s where we come in!
With over 80+ years of combined evaluation experience and 35+ years of organizational staff experience, ECS provides focused evaluation and an expert partner who can support your organization’s endeavors. We have clients nationwide and offer personalized expertise regardless of where your community is located. We help our clients set goals relevant to their community and its needs and fulfill those goals to the best of their ability.
We help clients:
- Maximize Funding: Your funding should work for you, not slip through your fingers. We’ve been in your shoes—without experience, it can be impossible to know where your money is going and who it’s really benefiting. ECS helps you keep track of your funding to ensure that it’s working for you and your community, and keeps you on the path to meeting your goals.
- Grant Application Assistance: We know your evaluation story is crucial to understanding your organization’s mission and ensuring you receive future funding. That’s why we offer no-obligation grant application reviews. As an ECS client, you receive dedicated assistance in writing the evaluation section for your grant applications.
- Strengthen the Capacity to Create Change: More than half of our staff have worked as community organization leaders or members and know how vital building capacity can be. Whether you are a new organization trying to find board members, educate volunteers to get them up to speed, or a seasoned organization with members who have been around the block; we are here to offer staff support in reinforcing, guiding, and training every member of your organization.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: ECS partners with Reach Software to offer a customizable, web-based data-tracking program that allows you to easily organize, review, and graph your efforts toward your goals. Reach can be customized to suit your organization’s terminology, funding sources, and media sources. The dashboard will give you a quick snapshot of your current entries and their impact, along with a graph you can export to show your organization members. The web-based program protects your data and allows multiple users to access it from any device, anywhere. Don’t worry; ECS offers specialized Reach training to introduce you to the many perks of the software. If you still have questions, you can always schedule refresher training or reach out to your evaluator–they’re experts in this, too.
- Wins! (Local, State & National Awards): We already know you’re amazing–but who doesn’t love to win?! Recognition for your hard work is like another piece of data–it reinforces your community contributions and highlights your successes. Winning an award is all about backing up your contributions. As evaluators who love data, we are here to help you review and use your data to achieve your goals, whether that be winning an award for your hard work or getting recognition from your community.
- Improved Communities: The greatest reward in an evaluator’s work is seeing our clients and their communities flourish. Your success is our success! Our team constantly works to do what’s best for you so you can focus on what’s best for your community to grow and succeed. So, our evaluators are always happy to cheer for you when you triumph because we know what it took to get there.
For more information or to request a time to meet with an ECS evaluator to discuss a proposal, click here.