Changing River Consulting

Are you a World Saver?

Don’t worry. I mean that in the nicest possible way. To me, a World Saver is bright, energetic and convinced that some things aren’t right in the world, so they’re committed to doing something about it.

If that’s you, you probably started a nonprofit, or work in the sector. Or maybe you’re a social entrepreneur, a committed volunteer, or a business person concerned about your social impact as well as your financial bottom line. You’ve got a vision for how the future can be better than the present.

But you’ve got a problem. You started this work to try and make a difference, but somewhere along the way you’ve gotten bogged down in details. You have to make budgets, hire staff, screen volunteers, and of course raise funds. And now people are telling you that you have to do program evaluation. What does that even mean?

You are exactly the type of person I want to work with.

Who am I? My name is Maria Gajewski and I Help World Savers. I own Changing River Consulting and for over 5 years now I’ve worked with nonprofits, charitable foundations, government offices, citizen groups, and concerned business people to help them make their good work even better. I can help you ask the right questions about your programs or organization, evaluate your results, and make the most effective improvements with the most efficient use of your resources. Nothing is more fun to me than seeing an organization getting better results, more funding, and more community involvement because of our work together.

I’m working to make ChangingRiver.com the best website for practical information about ways to evaluate programs, measure results, and make continuous improvement a realistic part of your busy workday. If there’s every any way I can help you, contact me. Thanks for visiting and let’s go out and save the world today.

You work in a small to medium size nonprofit. The staff and volunteers work hard daily to address needs in your community.  You think you are doing good work, but have no way to prove it. How can you know that you are making a difference?

Your nonprofit’s services have been “good enough” for a long time, but you know you need to make improvements to keep up. Where can you make changes to your services to improve quality without adding lots of extra work?

Your organization is working harder than ever. You are providing quality services to growing numbers of clients in need. You are dealing with funding cuts by asking staff and volunteers to do more work with fewer resources. How can you make the best use of the resources you have? How can you prove your effectiveness and make a case for more funding?

Changing River Consulting can help you answer all of these questions. Using accepted techniques in program evaluation, quality improvement, and change management, Changing River Consulting works with your nonprofit to measure program performance, identify places where improvement is needed, and take credit for the good work that you are doing.

Some of the tools we use include:
The Five Tier Program Evaluation Model. The Five Tier Model (Jacobs, 2003) can include needs assessment, monitoring and accountability, quality review and program clarification, outcomes measurement, and showing impact. This model is one of the best and most comprehensive ways to help programs measure their work. It is flexible and can be tailored to many timelines and budget options.

Systems Mapping. Evaluation can identify where improvement is needed, but doesn’t do a good job identifying ways to make those improvements. Using systems mapping techniques such as process flowcharts, Changing Rivers Consulting can work with your organization to identify leverage points to make noticeable improvements in organizational work at a minimum cost in time and money.

Change Management. It is one thing to identify needed changes, but another thing entirely to help staff and volunteers make the transition to new practices. Change management techniques can help bring people along to the next evolution of organizational work.

Contact Changing River Consulting to learn more about how we can help you help others.