Our Mission
Rooted-Growth’s philosophy is simple. We know mission-inspired groups do extremely hard work, often with limited resources, and are intentional about changing the world for the better. These organizations can benefit immensely from dedicating time to reflect, learn, experiment, and otherwise test small ways to tweak processes. This is how an organization grows sustainably. However, it is often challenging to find time for internal reflection in the face of external demands. Internal reflection provides an opportunity for growth, centering values, and listening to the voices of your stakeholders.
Rooted-Growth’s Process
Rooted-Growth meets with clients to identify their informational needs, develop designs, implement evaluations or build capacity, and facilitate discussions and implementation of findings. We develop designs using research and evaluation methods, community-based participatory processes, organizational learning, and social justice principles.
Rooted-Growth designs mixed methods evaluations specializing in collaborative and participatory approaches and evaluative skills such as survey development, focus groups (online and in person), pre and post tests, key stakeholder interviews, rubrics, site visits, and case studies. Rooted-Growth is always happy to partner with other evaluators, researchers, and content experts for varied skill sets when needed.
Benefits
Rooted-Growth engages clients in a structured process that supports and normalizes learning as part of ongoing work.
The benefits of working with Rooted-Growth:
- Learn about your successes
- Pair the expertise of your organization, youth, and community with research theories and methods
- Build your capacity to conduct work internally
- Facilitate and unpack findings and empower clients to know their strengths and areas for improvement
- Translate on-the-ground experiences to staff, administrators, board, and the larger community
Recent Work by Rooted-Growth
Equity in Education 10-Year Systems Change Study
2023 – 2024 ~ Denver, CO
Career Self-Efficacy Training, Social-Emotional Learning, and Financial Literacy
2021 – 2024 ~ Detroit, MI
An urban nonprofit hired Rooted-Growth to assess career exploration and self-efficacy training, serving over 2,500 middle and high school youths over three years. The nonprofit used the Hats and Ladders app and developed a trauma-informed social-emotional learning and financial literacy curriculum. This federally funded evaluation looked at dosage, reach, fidelity to the model, quality, and outcomes across three years.
Youth Inclusive City Initiative
2021 – 2024 ~ Detroit, MI
An urban nonprofit engaged youth and community members to identify key systemic barriers that reduce the likelihood youth thrive. Youth and community members prioritized areas for change while the backbone organization increased outreach, awareness, and community engagement. This federally funded project resulted in a Detroit Youth Action Cabinet and Steering Committee, a Detroit Youth Action Plan, and a framework. The evaluation used the social determinants of health framework across the three years to guide the design, development of surveys, and qualitative analysis.
Operationalizing a Citywide Youth Inclusivity Framework
2024 ~ Detroit, MI
Rooted-Growth was re-hired after the Youth Inclusive City federal grant initiative to operationalize the developed framework. Rooted-Growth identified measures and widely available statistics the city could monitor over the next few years as the initiative grows.
Alumni Study on Context, Social-Emotional Learning, and Outcomes
2019; 2023 – 2024 ~ Detroit, MI
Rooted-Growth was hired twice, five years apart, to assess a nonprofit’s impact on its alums. This mixed methods evaluation looked at the impact of the nonprofit’s programming on key identified outcomes and what alums prioritized as areas for focus going forward.
Evaluation Redesign & Capacity Building for an Environmental Education Nonprofit
2019 – 2021 ~ Eagle County, CO
Natalie's expertise helped us to analyze the effects of our multi-year youth development. Her skill around conducting focus groups, capturing that data and generating easy to read reports of our findings was invaluable to us, especially for writing grant reports and presenting findings to key stakeholders.
