The Improve Group

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Company Description

The Improve Group is a woman-owned, full-service evaluation, research, and strategic planning consulting firm based in St. Paul. We are committed to helping Minnesota nonprofits make the most of information and navigate complexity, ensure their investments lead to meaningful impact, and tell their stories to drive sustainability and support. This commitment is connected to our vision, which is that mission-driven organizations will effectively develop more resilient, equitable, and thriving communities. We became a Public Benefit Corporation in 2016, formalizing with the state our longstanding practice of making public benefit a primary objective.

We have served as an external evaluator of complex intervention programs for 20 years. In that time, we have worked with hundreds of nonprofits, foundations, and governmental agencies—and provided them with crucial and credible information to inform strategic decisions, improve program design and implementation, and deepen their work toward healthy and just communities. While we have worked with national and international organizations, our team possesses deep expertise on the key opportunities and challenges facing Minnesota’s nonprofit community. We have supported Minnesota nonprofits in navigating change and leveraging opportunities using effective strategic planning and targeted research and evaluation.

Through our work, we support efforts to create a more inclusive, supportive environment in which all people—but particularly those from vulnerable or underserved communities—flourish. To do this, we empower community members—those who have the most at stake—to take a leadership role in the evaluation process. We developed and practice a Community-Responsive Approach that seeks to amplify the voices of underrepresented community stakeholders—and ensure findings and recommended actions reflect and align with authentic community reflections and needs.

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Services Provided

The Improve Group conducts rigorous engagements to help nonprofits gain clarity and insight about the world around them and make greater impacts in their communities. We tailor our projects to each client’s needs and budget, and we are confident we can work together to design an engagement that works. We help organizations through the following services:

• Evaluation: Using the right mix of tested and innovative evaluation methods essential to measuring, articulating, and advancing impact.
• Evaluation Capacity Building & Training: Preparing organizations and their stakeholders to incorporate evaluation into their work.
• Evaluation Design: Collaborating with organizations to design high-quality evaluations that provide guidance on how to track, measure, and report on the impact of innovative programs or initiatives.
• Survey Administration: Designing and implementing community-responsive surveys to capture in-depth insights from diverse populations of all sizes, from a few dozen respondents to thousands of people.
• Needs & Assets Assessment: Developing comprehensive assessments that reveal true community needs and identify assets that help clients inform strategic decisions and deepen organizational impact.
• Research: Helping clients understand emerging issues and sift through complicated information for the insights required to make decisions and design new initiatives.
• Group Facilitation: Guiding organizations through meaningful conversations to come to consensus and inform strategic decisions.
• Strategic Planning: Incorporating diverse voices while helping clients align vision, strategy, and action to accomplish organizational missions.