If you're a funder, it's a major challenge for you to be caught between a large board that wants solid evidence of big results and non-profit grantees that can't always deliver what they promised. You must constantly justify your decisions, not only to your board, but to applicants and the outside world. And, you may wonder about the true impact of your grants.

Our approach to philanthropy combines the insight from over 15 years' experience as a national funder with a firm grounding in evaluation. Our needs assessments and guidelines help funders design and launch funding programs. Management of grant programs can include everything from guideline revision and promotion to application review to grant tracking. The evaluation of a grant program can include measuring impact, reporting, and even presenting results to your board.

• Grantmaking and Program Design. Responsible for program design, administration and evaluation of Engaging Dance Audiences (2008-present), a new $1.9 million pilot program that enables Dance/USA members to explore methods of engaging audiences for dance, learn from peers, and share the learning nationally. As full partners with Dance/USA, our firm is leaning and encouraging the dance field to embrace the use of new technology; better understand the relationship between audiences and donors; and build capacity in these areas that are critical to the field's future.
  
  Designed, managed, and evaluated Dance/USA's National College Choreography Initiative and American Masterpieces Dance-College Component (2000-2008), an extremely successful program that supports collaborations between guest artists, colleges and communities across the country. In its six rounds of funding, 149 residencies supported 91 artists at 95 different colleges reaching over 55,000 students; audiences numbered over 287,000, with another 50 projects currently underway. Based on the documentation and evaluation of its accomplishments, the NEA renewed the NCCI from a single year to three rounds of funding and then developed its predecessor American Masterpieces Dance - College Component (AMD-CC).
  
  
• Evaluation Training for Foundations, Arts Organizations, and Universities. Develops and trains staff in evaluation methodology that is defensible and systematic, yet appropriate for arts initiatives, whose impact can't always be captured in numbers. Clients include University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa), Southern Arts Federation (Atlanta), University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee), and Kenan Institute for the Arts (Winston-Salem). See one of the training tools, Evaluation Glossary for Funders.
  
  
• Commissioned to write the bookSinging Our Praises, which demystifies evaluation by highlighting examples of how arts presenters have used it to learn about their success. Real-life stories, guides and techniques from other fields are used to train practitioners to design their own evaluations. Funded by the Wallace Foundation, the text received the American Evaluation Association's sole national award for a publication in 2005.
  
  
• Conceptualized and developed content for the website IMPACT Arts for the Arts and Civic Engagement Impact Initiative of Animating Democracy at Americans for the Arts (AFTA). As one of their national advisors, we provided concepts, text and guidance for the website, and created an extensive database of resources and tools that can help funders and arts organizations better evaluate and report the social and civic outcomes of their work. Created a field study on Rha Goddess and the Hip Hop Mental Health Project. View some of our evaluation guides for arts and social impact.
  
  
• Grant Tracking and Evaluation. Conducted evaluation on behalf of the Covenant Foundation of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's Small Dances About Big Ideas. Evaluated a commissioning program for Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which conveyed to their board the long-term impact of supporting new work for both artists and audiences. Designed a database system that tracks the impact of grant making, allowing funders to gather, compare, search, transmit and assess information. This system has been adapted to the needs of funding programs, such as the NPN's residency program and the National College Choreography Initiative. Provides support to organizations in measuring and reporting their impact to private and public funders.
  
  
• National Research on Dance Communities. Conducts major studies of dance communities in cities across the United States to inform policy decisions. Studies for The Pew Charitable Trusts, as well as other funders have involved extensive research on Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.
  
  
• Panel and Site Visit Service. Callahan has served as panelist or site visitor for the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation's US-Mexico Fund for Culture, The Pew Charitable Trusts' Dance Advance Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. She has spoken at the gatherings of many arts organizations that provide funding including Dance/USA, The National Performance Network, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers and the Association Foundation Group.
  
  

Measure the impact of your programs.