This RFP is for evaluation consultation services for Garden-Raised Bounty, a community-based organization in Olympia, WA, USA more commonly known as GRuB. We seek someone with expertise in participatory action research or participatory, empowerment, and/or transformative evaluation; expertise in mixed methods; and experience providing technical assistance to community-based organizations. Services will include assessment of our organization’s existing evaluation practices; recommendations for best practices (as guided by understanding of both our organizational values and existing funding, time, reporting, and staffing constraints); and technical assistance in implementation of recommended practices. The evaluator will work with our Grants and Evaluation Manager to assess evaluation practices across programs and establish an understanding of current related constraints and requirements. Together, we will develop an evaluation plan which aligns more closely with our organization’s values of participant leadership and learning, as well as enables aggregation and disaggregation of data across programs, supports longitudinal data collection, and strengthens an iterative strategic planning process. Work can be done primarily remotely; we request that you make at least one in-person visit to GRuB to watch programs in action.

RFP Sent: January 23, 2018

Responses Due: February 28, 2018, 5:00 PM (PST)

Send any questions to: Amory Ballantine, Grants and Evaluation Manager, amory@goodgrub.org Send proposals to: Amory Ballantine, Grants and Evaluation Manager, amory@goodgrub.org Budget: $10,000

Project Activities:

1. Review existing organizational evaluation practices as documented by Grants and Evaluation Manager
   2. Site visit and optional conversations with select staff about evaluation goals
2. Submit draft plan to Grants and Evaluation Manager covering analysis of existing practices and constraints and outlining recommended changes, along with reasoning
   4. Amend plan to address additional considerations or questions, if needed
   5. Technical assistance in implementation of recommendations

GRuB’s work is predicated on a simple idea—that growing and sharing good food transforms lives—with

many and varied opportunities for expression. Our mission is to grow healthy food, people, and community. With roots in the land, we create opportunities for people to learn, lead, and thrive. We envision an equitable world where we are all nourished by healthy relationships, resilient community, and good food.

GRuB began in 1993 as the Kitchen Garden Project (KGP). Inspired by the work of a Vietnam veteran Dan Barker (founder of the Home Gardening Project), South Sounders Richard & Maria Doss began building free vegetable gardens for low-income people in southwestern Washington. The KGP’s mission was to empower low-income people with increased control of their own food security, while decreasing reliance on emergency food programs.

In 1996, an elder in our community named Bonnie Turner offered her backyard for an intergenerational community gardening project, enabling our founders to begin a garden program for youth and seniors. In 2001, this garden program merged with the KGP to become GRuB. Since then, we have built an established community non-profit which works at the intersection of food, education, and health systems to grow healthy food, people, and communities.

Each year, we directly engage approximately 650 Thurston County residents of all ages in relationships- based programming around food and agriculture. We primarily work with marginalized young people with low incomes and/or behavioral and disciplinary indicators of high ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) scores; low income families; students; seniors experiencing hunger; and veterans.

We believe good food is a basic human right. We believe growing, eating, and gathering around healthy food is a simple and powerful way to connect people with each other and to important work in our community.

We believe everyone is powerful regardless of current life circumstances and that our work and community thrives by including diverse experiences, cultures, opinions, and beliefs. We seek to transform systems of privilege and oppression that keep us from reaching our full potential as a community.

We begin our work by learning what others have accomplished and what others are currently doing. We believe we are all students and teachers and we can accomplish meaningful and sustained social change if we work from a place of abundance, love, joy, and appreciation.

We believe building meaningful relationships between people is a key strategy for social change. We enter relationships from a place of trust, compassion, respect, and honoring people where they are.

People will make powerful positive personal changes by engaging in community-building work they believe in. Powerful, lasting community change requires people who are creating solutions to issues that directly affect their lives.

Our programs and evaluation practices primarily serve the following populations:

• Low-income families in Thurston County, WA
• High school-age youth in Thurston County, WA with behavioral & disciplinary indicators of high ACE scores and/or who are enrolled in free and reduced lunch programs
• Coast Salish tribal communities
• Post-9/11 veterans
• Elementary school students
• Seniors experiencing food insecurity
• Our volunteer pool: volunteers tend to be from marginalized populations as well as folks with more resources including retirees, college students & other young adults, veterans and active duty military members, families with younger children, and service groups from other nonprofits &
  • Existing and potential donors (individuals, businesses, and foundations). Sixty-nine percent of our current revenue budget comes from these donors; we are working to further integrate communities we serve as grassroots
• Teachers (K-12 as well as colleges/universities). Teachers engage in our work by referring students to our programs, booking field trips on our farm, and attending our trainings to take our youth development model into their

GRuB in the Schools

GRuB’s school-based youth leadership & food justice programs use popular education strategies to engage young people in relevant relationships- and environment-based service learning. Our goal is to grow adults who understand connections between environmental sustainability and social justice, and are invested in changing their world for the better. With their hands in the soil, youth find greater self-esteem, self-care, academic confidence, and a profound sense of environmental and civic responsibility. They develop trust in themselves and others, and experience themselves as active participants in community change. Youth gain job skills, earn academic credit, and help grow our community’s access to good food. There are currently three GRuBlike programs in Thurston County: Freedom Farmers at Muirhead Farm, serving Olympia High School; Tumwater F.R.E.S.H. serving Tumwater School District; and our on-site program offering academic year programming to Capitol High School students. We offer Institutes, technical assistance, and other resources for educators and school districts interested in implementing our model.

Victory Garden Project

Since 1993, we have built dozens of community and school gardens, as well as nearly 2,900 free backyard gardens for low-income families through our oldest program, the Victory Garden Project (formerly known as the Kitchen Garden Project). Each year, we build 50+ vegetable gardens for families living at or below 185% of the federal poverty level, engaging veterans and youth in GRuB School as garden builders.

We prioritize the program leadership of low-income women, people of color, veterans and/or members of the LGBTQ community via the “Victory Garden Project Leadership Circle,” a program alumni advisory board made up of veterans and VGP gardeners. Core to this program is our belief and value that everyone is powerful, regardless of current life circumstances, and that our work and community thrives by including diverse experiences, cultures, opinions and beliefs.

Victory Farmers

Our Victory Farmers program engages veterans and active-duty military service members in relationships- and garden-based programming. Victory Farmers are connected with regular peer support, program leadership opportunities, communication skills training, and the opportunity to transform their strong military service ethic into civilian life through community-based work to grow, share, and help others access good food. The goal of the Victory Farm is to create a safe, non-confrontational place where veterans, active duty service members and their families work shoulder to shoulder with community, immersed in the healing nature of the outdoors, agriculture and dirt work. Meanwhile, food bank clients will have increased access to fresh food and the means to grow it.

Cultivating Community and Leaders

CCL translates the best of our youth program into cohort-based trainings and activities for adult stakeholders, using principles of popular education to nurture leadership and multicultural relationship skills. Its goal is to grow our community’s awareness, access to resources, and skills for personal and systems advocacy, while prioritizing leadership of low-income and otherwise marginalized community members in our programs. We reduce barriers to participation (e.g. by offering child care and transportation assistance) while establishing clear and accessible pathways to program and organizational leadership. Each year, we engage at least two cohorts in the aforementioned workshop series and 250+ volunteers across programs.

GRuB in the Good Food Movement

We sustainably grow more than 10,000 pounds of food and flowers each year for the Thurston County Food Bank, GRuB School youth, seniors, low-income families, veterans in transitional housing, and our broader community. Two acres of urban farmland serve as a beautiful outdoor classroom for GRuB School, field trips, summer camps, and Families on the Farm programming. The land is stewarded by GRuB School students, farm staff and interns, and community volunteers, and is preserved with support from the South of the Sound Community Farm Land Trust.

We offer vegetable and flower CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture- a weekly subscription) and operate a seasonal farm stand. We accept EBT payments for our CSAs, and a portion of the cost goes to subsidize the produce youth in GRuB School take home. We also offer free “CSA” shares to low-income families, seniors, and veterans in transitional housing.

Rx Garden Pilot:

This year, we are also embarking on a pilot “prescription garden” project in partnership with a local pediatrician’s office.

We primarily use paper and web-hosted surveys, relying heavily on Likert scales and the YARPET (Youth At-Risk Program Evaluation Tool) to evaluate programs’ efficacy. We engage regularly in informal evaluation (such as group debriefing after events to identify “alphas” and “deltas”). Last year, our staff undertook documentation of existing evaluation practices (both formal and informal) by program. At the start of our work together, we will share these summaries of program evaluation practices along with a complete set of electronic End of Year reports for all programs, current evaluation tools/ surveys, tracking documents, and a copy of our current strategic plan with you via a folder in Google Drive.

Our primary objective is to increase synergy, efficiency, and accuracy of quantitative and qualitative evaluation practices across programs, enabling big-picture analysis of our work, while increasing our practices’ alignment with participatory principles (particularly those of participant ownership and learning). We seek to find a strong balance between qualitative and quantitative metrics.

Our new evaluation practices will:

• Reflect our organizational values
• Enable aggregation and disaggregation of data across programs
• Enable longitudinal analysis of program impact
• Be as participatory as possible
• Support iterative strategic planning
• Meet existing reporting requirements
• Reflect the seasonality of our work
• Balance qualitative and quantitative metrics
• Capture impacts of our work (such as its social-behavioral health benefits) not currently highlighted

As listed in the summary, our budget for this project is $10,000 (including travel expenses for at least one site visit). If you are interested in giving us a discounted rate for your services, we are able to give tax deductions for discounts because of our nonprofit status.

• Master’s degree required in Social Sciences, Public Health, Teaching, or a related field with training in program evaluation, research methods, and data analysis OR equivalent professional experience (one year of full-time professional experience will substitute for one year of masters-level coursework)
• Program evaluation experience which includes quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches and evaluation and measurement design, implementation, and data analysis
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to provide technical assistance and prepare reports in an accessible format for a non-technical audience
• Strong data management and analysis skills
  • Experience consulting with and understanding of nonprofits, foundations, and government organizations
• Proficiency with MS Excel and Word and Google Drive
• Demonstrated ability to work autonomously and as part of a team

• Access to MS Excel and Word or ability to convert documents to Excel and Word without formatting issues prior to sharing with GRuB
  • Access to PC or laptop, high speed internet, and Google Drive for collaborative remote work
• Access to Skype or Google Hangout for video calls (if you prefer other tech tools for remote collaborative work, please address how you will coordinate their use in your proposal)
  • Reliable access to telephone

• Please include the following elements in your proposal response:

• Details about your experience, qualifications, and values as an evaluator, including:
• Relevant experience working with populations GRuB serves
• How your approach to evaluation aligns with GRuB’s values
• Experience with participatory research or evaluation
• Experience providing technical assistance to community-based organizations
• Experience with quantitative methods
• A budget detailing costs and fees not to exceed $10,000 to conduct the activities outlined in this request for proposal
• As mentioned above, if you prefer using tech tools other than Google Hangouts or Skype for remote work, please explain how you will coordinate their use
• Amory (GRuB’s Grants and Evaluation Manager) will be your primary point of contact, but 7 other managers and directors will have input on processes and needs. Let us know in your proposal if you want direct contact with all 8 people, or prefer working exclusively through Amory, and why
• If you feel a site visit is unnecessary, please explain why. Address how you will identify gaps in our data collection practices, as well as practical ways to make data collection more participatory, without in-person program observation
• Timeline for workflow
• If available for additional technical assistance, address whether you would offer additional TA at an hourly rate or as a bundle
• Terms & conditions
• References

RFP sent: Jan. 23, 2018

Responses due: Feb. 28, 2018

First interviews conducted by phone: March 7-21

Second interviews: March 26-30

Winner selected & contacted: week of March 30

Site visit: April 2018

Phase 1 of Project: April 1 – June 30

• Assessment of current evaluation practices & recommendations (including site visit in April)
• Development/ identification of specific evaluation tools & tracking systems
• Draft evaluation plan to Grants and Evaluation Manager for staff review: early May 2018
• Plan revised (if necessary) and finalized: mid-June 2018

Phase 2 of Project (technical assistance): July 1 – December 15, 2018

Thank you for your interest in responding to this RFP with a proposal for evaluation services. We look forward to your response!

If you have any questions, please contact Amory Ballantine, Grants & Evaluation Manager (Amory@goodgrub.org/ 360-753-5522 x218).