The Freeman Foundation
Understanding the Impact of a Distinctive Program
Launched in 1998, The Freeman Foundation's Asian Immigrant and Refugee Economic and Education Opportunity Program aimed to increase the availability of English language instruction and workforce development services. The program concept came from board member Graeme Freeman, who initiated a pilot program in Burlington, Vermont. "We worked with local employers to develop English as a Second Language classes for underemployed refugees from camps in Thailand," recalled Freeman.
Based on that pilot, the Freeman Foundation sought to extend the program to a broader group of underemployed Asian immigrants in various locales. The Foundation hired TCC Group to assess the need for such a program. After extensive research, TCC consultants reported back that there was indeed a growing need for language and employment services for recent Asian immigrants (and particularly refugees), but little available funding.
These findings motivated the Foundation to fund eight programs in four cities and Freeman hired TCC Group to monitor, visit and informally evaluate the programs. "TCC Group's consultants served as an extension of our program staff, helping us to ensure that funded programs (many of which were fledgling organizations) made the most of our grants," says Freeman.
But in 2004, after six years of funding, the Foundation wanted to more formally assess whether the program had positively affected participants in funded programs--in the short run in terms of new skills and jobs, and in the long run in terms of improving their prospects for a more secure financial future. They again turned to TCC Group, because of our knowledge of the field and our relationships with grantees. "We wanted to see what the program had accomplished, and which grantees were ready to take off independently, without Foundation support," says Freeman.
Innovative Assessment Process Generates Useful Insights
TCC Group consultants had already demonstrated their capacity to work with a broad range of stakeholders-capacity building organizations at grassroots levels, Foundation staff and trustees. They had built strong relationships with Freeman grantees, acting as mentors rather than as adversaries as they monitored grantees' progress and so, were well positioned to produce an accurate assessment of program impact.
TCC designed an innovative performance assessment process. They drew on a broad range of inputs including the questionnaires that grantees completed every six months and site visits. "Using data from this ongoing monitoring effort," says Freeman, "the consultants examined the cumulative results of grantees' work and the costs of obtaining these results. In addition, they were able to compare performance among grantees."
But the challenge remained assessing how Freeman grantees stacked up against other organizations with similar projects or goals. TCC Group identified national benchmarks or minimum performance expectations and costs for participation in English as a Second Language, citizenship, vocational, and small business development training classes. These indicators were used as baselines against which to evaluate grantee programs.
TCC's innovative assessment process generated a host of useful findings. The consultants found that the program had filled an important gap in services and was directly responsible for advancing economic opportunities for Asian immigrants and refugees. In addition, they found that the program had long-term benefits for individual clients and their families, as well as for their communities.
Value Confirmed, Direction Defined
According to Graeme Freeman, Foundation board and staff members found the report extremely useful in validating the program's value. "As a result," says Freeman, "we decided to continue support for some of the grantees for a total of six to seven years, an unusually long funding term."
TCC Group found other grantees to be up and running smoothly after their initial incubation period, and able to count on other sources of funding. More broadly, TCC confirmed the Foundation's sense that the greatest need for such services for Asian immigrants had been addressed (as that need came from the influx of Asians in the early 1990s).
Graeme Freeman emphasizes that The Freeman Foundation could not have captured such a clear understanding of the Program's impact without TCC Group's team. "I recommend TCC Group to any foundation that doesn't want to hire another program officer or evaluation staff member", says Freeman. "We trust them completely."
