Peter York

Education: BA: Purdue University, MSSA & PhD (ABD): Case Western Reserve University's Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences in Social Service Administration
Service Expertise: evaluation

Publications:

• A Funder's Guide to Evaluation: Leveraging Evaluation to Improve Nonprofit Effectiveness (Fieldstone) 2005
• "Success by Design: How R&D Activates Program Innovation and Improvement in the Nonprofit Sector," TCC Group 2011
• Chronicle of Philanthropy, "Charities May Wind Up Paying for President's 'Pay for Success' Idea" 2011
• "The Sustainability Formula," TCC Group 2009
• Zoo Biology, "Development and implementation of an evaluation strategy for measuring conservation outcomes" 2009
• "Learning As We Go" TCC Group, 2003
• "Building the Capacity of Capacity Builders," TCC Group 2003

Presentations & Speeches:

• An R&D Approach to Evaluation, American Evaluation Association Annual Conference
• Learning to Lead and Leading to Learn. Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management
• Philanthropy's Tool Shed. GEO 2010 National Conference
• Nonprofit Sustainability. Organization Development Network of New York
• The Sustainability Formula. The Corporation for National and Community Service and Western New York Grantmakers' Grantmaker/Grantseeker conference, Buffalo
• Evaluative Learning. Council on Foundations Annual Conference
• Transforming Evaluation Findings into Learning. Eastern Evaluation Research Society Conference
• Evaluating the Impact of Service/Volunteer Efforts. National Conference on Volunteering & Service
• Why Leadership Matters: National Trends in Organizational Adaptability and the Importance of Strategic Learning to Nonprofit Effectiveness. Nonprofit Services Center, St. Louis
• Organizational Effectiveness and Its Fundraising Impact. Association of Fundraising Professionals' Fundraising Day Conference, New York
• The Next Chapter on Volunteerism: What you should know about the next wave of service. Compasspoint Nonprofit Day 2010, San Francisco
• Assessing Foundation Performance. Conference of Southwest Foundations, Vail
• Evaluating Grantees, Conference of Southwest Foundations, Vail
• Strategic Learning. Alliance for Nonprofit Management's Nonprofit Day and Montana Nonprofit Association's annual conference
• Evaluating the Impact of Service/Volunteer Efforts, Alliance for Nonprofit Management, St. Louis
• Strategic Learning. Northern California Grantmakers, San Francisco

Peter York is Senior Partner and Chief Research and Learning Officer at TCC Group. York specializes in: designing and implementing evaluations of foundation-supported multi-site initiatives, community building initiatives and social programs; conducting strategic reviews of best practices to inform the development and implementation of foundation grantmaking strategies; and providing technical assistance to grantees around evaluation, program design and strategic planning. A current focus of York's work is on assisting private foundations, corporations and nonprofit organizations with developing and using "evaluative learning" approaches, designs, methods and tools that can best answer, in a formative manner, the questions "what works" and "why?".

At the firm, York leads the firm's evaluation work with private and corporate philanthropies, and nonprofit organizations. Recent work includes facilitating evaluation capacity building for grantee organizations for funders like GAP Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Weingart Foundation, The OneStar Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the California Endowment. He also designed "evaluative learning" systems for organizations like the Philadelphia Zoo, grantee organizations of the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust and Sun Valley United Way, and the New York Boys Club. He lead, designed, and conducted cluster evaluations of foundation-developed program initiatives like the Wachovia Foundation's Teachers and Teaching Initiative, the Deaconess Foundation's Impact Partnership initiative, and the Flint Funders' Collaborative's (Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Ruth Mott Foundation, Community Foundation of Greater Flint, and the United Way of Genesee County) "BEST" capacity building initiative, and also lead the development of cost-effective evaluative learning tools such as the Core Capacity Assessment Tool.

York has conducted numerous presentations and workshops throughout the country to funders and nonprofit leaders on the topic of evaluation, and written reports and articles about evaluation approaches and substantive lessons learned. York is currently acting as an evaluator on New York City's Civic Corp volunteer program and assisting in the development of strategies for addressing volunteer service for the President's national Reimagining Service Task Force. He also serves on the board of the Alliance for Nonprofit Management and the Alliance for Effective Social Investing. He conducted his graduate studies at Case Western Reserve University's Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, where he earned his Master's Degree in Social Service Administration and is "all but dissertation" in his Ph.D. work.

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