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. Designs, manages and evaluates Dance/USA's National College Choreography Initiative (2000 to present) an extremely successful program that supports collaborations between guest artists, colleges and communities across the country. In its three rounds of funding, 149 residencies supported 80 artists at 87 different colleges reaching over 20,000 students; audiences numbered nearly 175,000. Based on the documentation and evaluation of its accomplishments, the NEA renewed this initiative from a single year to three rounds of funding. Now, its predecessor American Masterpieces Dance - College Component (AMD-CC) is funding 28 projects, which are currently underway.
  
  Advised the Chicago Community Trust's Dance Initiative (2001 to 2005), which was designed to enhance its dance community in the areas of creation, audience development, and education. Facilitated the planning process to refine goals, objectives and evaluation efforts, and reported on the extensive impact of this community foundation's past giving. Developed new evaluation standards that were tailored to the Trust's funding decisions and building national awareness of this model program.
  
  Initial design and selection for the Joyce Theater's Joyce Soho Residency Program (1999) which provides space and production support for New York artists.
  
  Assessment and original selection of sites for New England Foundation on the Arts National Dance Project, (1996) for dance production and touring.
• 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).
• Commissioned to write Singing 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.
• Grant Tracking and Evaluation. 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.