The Foundation is committed to evaluating and sharing our progress in improving the health of all Kansans. It’s important to know if we are making a difference through our investments and partnerships in our four impact areas.

To make informed decisions about these investments of time and resources, we use Evaluation and Learning to develop accurate and consistent data points to effectively guide our future work. This helps us plan better, improve implementation and track progress. Evaluation and Learning are key elements of our KHF Strategic Work Plan and help us with our values of being strategic, accountable and transparent.

Uses for KHF Evaluation

KHF uses evaluation and learning to:

• Understand. With lessons learned from our past work, we can make informed decisions about how, what and where to focus our efforts in the future. To know where we’re going, we have to know where we’ve been.
• Clarify. With our indicators as a guide, we can determine how our work is contributing to our four impact areas and with our priority populations. This also helps us celebrate grantee success and look for future opportunities for improvement.
• Learn. Collecting data helps us to see what is working and what it not working, and we share that with other grantees, other grant projects or with larger communities to advance our future work.
• Improve. Tracking progress throughout a grant helps us to see how our partners are working toward goals, and determine if there are changes needed to maximize outcomes and impact.

Our Approach

KHF conducts evaluation on every initiative, using one of three approaches:

Grantee Reporting (grantee self-analysis):
Through our grantmaking process, grantees are required to provide objectives that measure progress and impact. KHF works with grantees to ensure that these are SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time bound) objectives and that provide clarity about who they are serving and why the work is important. Grantees document progress toward objectives at least annually, and KHF Program Officers use this information to support grantees and help us celebrate grantee successes.

Grant Assessment Reports (KHF staff-analysis):
At the conclusion of all grants, KHF Program Team members create an assessment of the grant, based on meeting objectives and learnings. This summary report captures anecdotal information from the grant or grantees, any situational factors that evolved during the grant, and helps to identify lessons learned and the extent the grant achieved intended results.

External Evaluations (external analysis):
On some grant initiatives, KHF works with an external evaluator to help us measure the impact of the project and learn from the intervention. These third-party service providers work with KHF and the grantees to develop theories of change, design evaluation plans, collect data on grant activities and interventions, and provide analysis of data. This may come in the form of:

• Traditional evaluation reports
• Executive summaries of results
• Reflective assessments – a brief report that assesses progress/accomplishments, lessons learned and potential next steps