Aging, Alzheimer’s, Dementia, End of Life and Advanced Care

Most organizations know what it takes to get their ACL grant submission out the door, but there’s one critical step that’s often overlooked or simply checked off without much consideration: the evaluation component.

Pima Council of Aging (PCOA) was no stranger to ACL grants, but they wanted to expand the possibility of what evaluation meant for their work. As they worked to renew their ACL grant to support initiatives that improve the experience of aging in their county, PCOA tapped Viable Insights as a grant evaluation partner. What they got instead was a partner dedicated to optimizing their entire operation.

Evaluation isn’t just a chance to get a third-party stamp of approval on your ACL grant submission — it’s a chance to make your work plan measurable. Measurability clearly demonstrates the proof of your work’s impact, fuels continuous learning and improvement, and perhaps most importantly, gives you a better chance at securing future funding.

Any evaluator can sign off on your outcome measures. But as a true evaluation partner, Viable Insights ensures that your organization has the tools and processes to actually collect those outcomes and put them to work.

Viable Insights helped PCOA develop the sound outcome measures that would eventually inform their work and the success of their organization. We identified the best way to measure their progress, who would collect the data and how, where the data would be housed, and how it would be reported.

We helped secure PCOA’s grant by acting as part of their team, equally as invested to see their important initiatives funded. By ensuring their objectives were measurable across the board, Viable Insights gave PCOA the confidence to carry out their plan — and assured ACL that their proposed plan was soundly thought through. 

In a world where dementia affects 55+ million individuals and counting — and where folks are living longer lives than ever — impact is all the more important. If you want an impact-oriented evaluator that does so much more than simply handle your data, you have a partner in Viable Insights.

“Viable Insights knocked it out of the park as our third-party evaluator for the Administration on Community Living grant! They totally got our passion for dementia care, and the synergy and chemistry made us the perfect match. We’re excited to team up again and can’t wait to see what we’ll accomplish together!”

Tara Krantzman // Chief Operating Officer // Oakwood Creative Care

Through adult day clubs, memory cafés, and broader family care, Oakwood Creative Care provides a wide array of support for older adults and those with cognitive and physical challenges in their community. 

Like many organizations in the aging space, Oakwood needed support not just for their ACL grant evaluation plan, but with larger strategic initiatives across their entire organization. 

In close partnership with the team at Oakwood Creative Care, Viable Insights helped get the prior ACL grant over the finish line, helped them prepare and secure a second round of funding from ACL, and — on the organizational level — helped their leadership team craft a multi-year strategic plan to achieve their organizational goals.

With their ACL grant application nearly ready for submission, Oakwood Creative Care had just one final component to address: the evaluation plan. Rather than simply check the evaluation box, the Oakwood team really wanted a sound plan that documented their impressive impact.

When Viable Insights met with the Oakwood team, our values were a natural fit. What separates Viable Insights from other ACL grant evaluators is our eye focused on your organization’s future. As your partner in evaluation, we ask the critical questions to thoroughly workshop your program initiatives all the way up to the 11th hour.

The result is much more than a checked box for your ACL grant. It’s the generation of bespoke measures for your important work while ensuring your grant gets submitted in a timely fashion. We’re proud to say that our first ACL grant evaluation with Oakwood Creative Care resulted in a successfully completed grant. We’re even prouder that the Oakwood team tapped Viable Insights for a second ACL grant, which was recently awarded as well.

When Oakwood Creative Care’s board asked Viable Insights for a 3-year strategic plan, they received a clear road map to navigate them toward success. At Viable Insights, strategic planning starts from the big picture — a logic modeling activity of sorts. What does your organization want to have accomplished several years down the road? With that end goal in mind, we go back to the present day and sketch out the path to confidently take you there.

Along the way, we explore every resource your organization is throwing at your initiatives, from team members to funding. We then document the activities that those resources will fuel, the evidence that those activities are taking place including the number of people served, and the short- and long-term effects of those activities that align with your end goal.

With the road map in hand, we lay out the actionable path forward. We identify measures to assess impact, forecast when measurements will be taken and how the resulting data should be reported/used, how to course-correct when we stray from the path, and assign individuals to each component so that the organization’s teams have an active part in the work. Oakwood’s leadership team confidently faced the 3-year road ahead with their strategic plan from Viable Insights. And your organization can, too.

“Deven and his team provided support and guidance for the Partnership as a whole during critical times throughout its evolution over the course of six years. Viable Insights understands the need to flex to support ever-changing needs across necessary phases in organizational development.”

Sarah Ascher // Assoc VP // Arizona EOLCP

Arizona End of Life Care Partnership (EOLCP), anchored at United Way of Tucson & Southern Arizona, is a partnership of 28+ organizations that ensure people in their community receive the care they desire at the end of life. 

There’s no overstating the impact of EOLCP’s work, but measuring that impact was another story. Viable Insights stepped in as an evaluation consultant to bring consistency to the way the collective impact measures, stores, and reports data.

For partnerships as extensive at EOLCP, the effective exchange of data is a must — but it’s never a given. Viable Insights put EOLCP’s internal and external communication practices under the microscope to help data flow better across the board.

We supported EOLCP’s Anchor Team to guide the work and set space for each partner to collaborate as effectively as possible. In doing so, we held strategic sessions with each of the 28+ partners – together and independently – to work through assumptions, share experiences, and set the framework for better communication across the partnership.

With that framework in place, we then set measurables, identified the resources needed to achieve each organization’s outcomes, and developed protocols for data collection. The culmination was a tangible document for each of the 28+ partners to build their own strategic initiatives — and easily report them to EOLCP thanks to a Viable Insights-developed custom database.

At the end of the day, communication is the key to every successful partnership. Viable Insights is uniquely positioned to help both your program and your people work together like never before.
We didn’t stop at strategic planning or infrastructure building for the EOLCP. Our team also facilitated community listening sessions across different groups across Southern Arizona. You can see the Listening Report Sessions for Arizona End of Life Care Partnership right here.

“As we considered how we want to be involved in our community, there is something special about focusing on a space that affects everyone. Really, everyone. Regardless of race/ethnicity, age, culture…we’re all impact by aging, end-of-life, dementia, and Alzheimers. How we experience these things is, of course, are different and needs to be accounted for as organizations seek to be strategic, utilize data, and engage in evaluation.”

Deven Wisner // Founder // Viable Insights

ELDER Alliance is a vast partnership of non-profit organizations, businesses, government agencies, and community partners in Southern Arizona. Together, the Alliance supports the health, independence, and community involvement of senior citizens and those with dementia and Alzheimer’s. 

With so many organizations and focus areas, the Alliance struggled to talk about themselves — and to find the catalyst to reignite their mission for the coming year.

Equipped with insights from a survey and facilitated sessions, Viable Insights helped Alliance leadership develop action items for the road ahead. And with ongoing support with reporting and data sharing activities, ELDER Alliance confidently set their eyes on success for the year to come.

To help with the Alliance’s struggle with communicating who they are externally, Viable Insights started at the roots within the organization. What followed was an extremely rewarding consulting relationship where Viable Insights worked closely with the leadership team to bring the collective into lockstep.

Viable Insights brought action team chairs, co-chairs, and the leadership team together to discuss the Alliance’s focus, evaluation and measures, and other pressing issues. Once we had built an intimate knowledge of leadership’s goals, we were better able to assess the needs of the broader coalition — and it started with reimagining reporting from the ground up.

Together with the Alliance’s established action teams, we worked through strategic planning exercises and developed tools that empowered Alliance leadership to concisely document the coalition’s overall impact, help their partners do the same for their own organizations, and secure grants and other critical funding. Whether you need support with annual impact reporting or an outside perspective on the structure of your entire organization, Viable Insights can help you set a clear and confident path forward.

Aging impacts us all, and there is no shortage of work to be done to ensure everyone can age in a way aligned with their beliefs, values, and preferences. This is more important than ever as we approach 2030, when all Baby Boomers will be over the age of 65.

If your organization works in the aging, Alzheimer’s, dementia, and end-of-life space, you’ve got a partner in Viable Insights. Together we can develop your ACL grant, optimize your outcome measures, support your organizational development, and set the foundation for your organization’s continued success in the aging space.