Winter Newsletter – Evaluation approach & year-end news

By Schonfield Consulting | March 20, 2025 |

As we enter the holiday season (how did that happen so fast?!), we’re thinking about gratitude and everything we’re so grateful for (wonderful friends and family, amazing clients, very gratifying projects). But also thinking about all the work that lies ahead after our very difficult elections. We don’t know what the next four years will bring but we do know that many in the nonprofit world are gearing up for multiple battles.

We’re doing our small part by supporting our hard-working clients with fundraising, organizational assessment and evaluation. See more below.

We hope you’re well. Here’s to a productive and hope-filled 2025!

Anne and the Schonfield Consulting Team

Fundraising Strategy for ReWork the Bay

Based in San Francisco, ReWork the Bay promotes a just and equitable economy in the Bay Area, that centers the voices and needs of working people. As ReWork the Bay celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2025, we’re helping the organization develop a fundraising strategy to increase its revenue and impact. Working closely with ReWork leaders, we’re identifying “best fit” foundation prospects, developing strategies to reach funders, and coaching staff on fundraising efforts. Our goal is to help ReWork improve its fundraising success, increase its support and meet its mission of ensuring more people in the Bay Area have quality, empowered employment.

Learn more about ReWork the Bay

Organizational Assessment, Heart of the Valley

In spring 2024, we began working with Heart of the Valley Services for Seniors (HOV), a nonprofit in Santa Clara CA helping seniors to live full and independent lives. HOV was experiencing multiple challenges and sought our help with an organizational assessment. Schonfield Consulting worked closely with their Board and staff, conducted key stakeholder interviews and facilitated an in-person Board retreat to review different scenarios. Our assessment helped the Board decide to hire a full-time Executive Director and we then supported the search for this new position. With this new leadership already in place, HOV is now poised for growth and continued impact for the many seniors it serves.

Learn more about Heart of the Valley

Our Approach to Evaluation

We recently concluded a program evaluation for Michigan Saves (located in Lansing MI, featured in our last newsletter). This led us to reflect on what are the “building blocks” for a successful evaluation and how clients can get started. Even before data is collected, organizations should start with clear questions you want answered — why does X program have fewer clients/less impact than expected; what changes are needed? Then data collection needs to be “right sized” to answer these questions. Evaluations are often overwhelmed with too much data (from surveys, interviews, focus groups). We worked closely with this client to begin with focused evaluation questions and clearly understand their needs and challenges. We then collected data to answer those questions and worked hard to distill and make meaning from all the data, with clear recommendations going forward. With the evaluation results, Michigan Saves is now poised to tackle some of its program challenges in 2025 and beyond.

Learn more about our evaluation work

Need support with your fundraising, organizational assessment, or evaluation?
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Schedule a free consultation.

Tagged evaluation, Fundraising, Hiring, rework the bay, Strategic Planning, Team

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“Anne and Amy did a marvelous job with our strategic plan -- sensitive to the needs of staff, leadership and Board; focused and efficient; encouraging and relentless. Hidden Villa made an excellent choice to work with Schonfield Consulting.”

“Anne is brilliant at strategic planning. She worked with the NRDC India team to chart our vision and plan for two plans spanning 10 years. She guided a tough task to successful completion by keeping us on target. I highly recommend Anne!”

"Anne is a pleasure to work with and guides you through the difficult strategic planning process with thoughtfulness, passion, and a great work ethic!”

"The ABPAS business plan that Schonfield Consulting helped us develop clearly explains our mission to investors and donors. The research Eva did was comprehensive and well-presented. The services provided by Anne and Eva can definitely help propel many other agencies like ours.”

"We needed someone who was independent, highly focused and knowledgable about capturing data from nonprofits. The final report was excellent. Thanks for taking on Fresno!"

"Anne is a valued colleague and I highly recommend her to anyone needing a top notch consultant... The quality of her work is excellent and her ability to turn it around quickly was very impressive."

"Thank you for carrying us through this process. The end result is pretty dramatic, thanks to your careful eye, your methodical work, and your creative suggestions. You’re a superstar!"

"From her insights into fundraising, to her pointed questions on strategy and her well-organized agendas -- Anne's support has been invaluable. Anne has great energy and is an important member of the TAHMO team."

"Anne has done excellent consultancy work. Her research and review of grant materials produced high quality outputs—she asked tough questions and delivered on time. I would highly recommend Anne."

"That was a great event. Thanks so much for a fantastic facilitation – you know your job and you do it very well! I'm already looking forward to next year’s meeting."

"Working with Anne was extremely excellent! We were very happy with the board retreat and initial strategic planning. The summary report from the retreat is great and goes a long ways to setting a future agenda for CCS."

"Thanks for the excellent job on the case studies. I presented your work at the convening and it garnered a lot of attention. I’m excited to see how things move forward!"

"It was a pleasure working with Schonfield Consulting on our health program evaluation. Anne was super thoughtful and organized, and helped us translate lots of data into a very useful product for our Board."

“Anne provides us with excellent fundraising advice. She put a lot of time and thinking into an excellent fundraising retreat with Board and staff. We did some darn good work and had a good time doing it!”