We are trained social science researchers who enjoy working with staff, board members, community stakeholders, and others to develop strategy, learning, and dissemination tools such as program evaluations, organizational equity assessments, and program briefs to answer questions and guide organizational actions. We partner with you to produce accessible and useful recommendations, case studies, issues briefs, and other items to support your decision making, and we have a strong network of designers and data visualization experts that support us in making sure we are bringing information to you in ways that you can put into practice immediately.
“I highly recommend Cities & People as an experienced evaluation and/or design consultant for government or community based organizations. C&P has an experienced group of experts competently working with the various moving pieces of evaluating a program or organization, the data analysis and producing well-written beautiful reports. We especially appreciated C&P working around our busy schedules and reworking timelines several times to meet critical deadlines yet leave enough space to produce a high level report. Our funders were pleased with the various measurement tools C&P helped us design, the quality of the report and especially the executive summary, which made it easy to engage the detailed report. ”
Since early 2024, we have partnered with the Women’s Funding Network in a Gates Foundation funded equitable evaluation to analyze the impact of bringing women’s fund leaders and large scale national funders together in a design process. The project led to a participatory process in which we have engaged the Design Council members, an Advisory Committee of leaders of women’s funds across the US, and WFN staff members in creating an evaluation framework that can be used to collect data on indicators that can tell the individual, regional, and collective stories of the impact of women’s funds over time. This project will culminate in both an internal and external report, the latter of which will be published in late 2025.
For a city that’s just 1.9 square miles, The City of West Hollywood is, and has been, executing a thoughtful and considerable initiative on homelessness for many years. We were honored to be able to support the City of West Hollywood’s City Councilmembers in their Homelessness Study Session on June 9, 2025, providing a comprehensive report that included a summary overview of current services, responses, gaps, and needs for people experiencing homelessness in the City. We also offered recommendations for improved, holistic supports for this vulnerable population, which the City Council unanimously voted to move forward with. Click here to read the report the councilmembers used as an anchor for their conversation on the future of homelessness services in the City. We are impressed to see how the City of West Hollywood prioritizes care, dignity, and kindness in how it approaches people experiencing homelessness within its borders.
We partnered with Education Trust-West to train eight of their grantees on evaluation design and analysis for their individual impact reports. We are providing both training and 1:1 support on evaluation planning, data collection methods, data analysis, and data storytelling so that each nonprofit organization gains knowledge, experience, and confidence in measuring their program’s impact, culminating with an impact report they created with our support by summer 2024.
Throughout 2023, we partnered with the Southern California College Access Network to conduct the first ever research on the representation of historically underrepresented communities in student government in all three public college systems in California. In our data gathering, analysis, and report, Represent All, you’ll find how we designed a participatory framework in which we engaged with both a committee of student government representatives and another composed of student government staff members. The committees enhanced our knowledge of the landscape of student government in California, and also ensured we had the participation, perspectives, and input of key stakeholders of the study.
From 2021-2023, College Futures Foundation contracted us to advise them and their statewide network grantee cohort with a developmental evaluation. The foundation sought to increase engagement, connection, and purpose among the grantees and to coach the two facilitating organizations on their facilitation, project management, and roles in the cohort. Our work resulted in the network of grantees reporting a tremendous increase in buy-in for the network. The outcomes included grantees co-designing a new governing and participation structure for the network, co-creating a new purpose for their work together, and sharing a newfound excitement and engagement level with the foundation as a partner. In May 2024, we completed a second, large-scale impact and strategic learning evaluation project with College Futures Foundation to assess the impact of their grantmaking strategy on their policy and advocacy grantees, offering them feedback throughout the project timeline. This project culminated in a published article on their grantmaking strategy, a compendium of bright spots of collaboration among their grantees, and an internal impact evaluation and recommendations report for the foundation.
We additionally:
Recently provided technical assistance and training on evaluation to Street Soccer USA
Conducted a fund development assessment in 2023 for Feeding America
