Our services and products fall into three interrelated categories:

• Strategy & Program Design
• Organizational Learning & Evaluation
• Philanthropic Industry Analysis

Strategy & Program Design

Blueprint advises clients on all aspects of program development and grantmaking.  In our strategy practice area, we facilitate conversations to address key questions at these levels:

Vision - What change do you want to bring about?

Strategy - What are the best pathways to achieve the desired change?

Operations - How can you optimally put strategies into practice?

Learning - How can you learn from your (and others’) experiences so that you can keep moving in the right direction?

Our strategic planning and program design work is complemented by perspectives from our two other practice areas: organizational learning and evaluation and philanthropic industry analysis.  We are very interested in projects that contribute new knowledge to the field of philanthropy, including design of innovative program models and vehicles to align philanthropic activities. 

Specific services include:

• Values clarification
• Goal identification
• Strategy development & operational planning
• Situation analysis, environmental scans, & programmatic needs assessment
• Program design
• Process design & facilitation
• Issue area research

Organizational Learning & Evaluation

Blueprint helps grantmakers integrate evaluation tools and practices into their organizations to glean knowledge and feed ongoing learning.  This may include helping our clients identify goals for evaluation, working with staff to strengthen internal evaluation capacity, and thinking through how grant monitoring systems can provide better knowledge to improve program strategy.  We emphasize formative program evaluation that can provide ongoing feedback to inform program refinement and generally do not pursue outcomes evaluations where the lens is focused on the grantees rather than on the grantmakers.

However, we are very interested in both formative and outcome evaluations that contribute new knowledge to the field of philanthropy and feed our industry analysis work.  This would include evaluations of innovative program models (for example, our evaluation of Social Venture Partners, Seattle), or of new philanthropic tools (for example, our evaluation of GrantCraft).  In addition, we are interested in evaluating projects or initiatives that offer opportunities for us to apply the frameworks or tools we have developed in our industry analysis work in order to foster greater impact. 

Specific services include:

• Developing evaluation frameworks and program logic models
• Defining measurable objectives and process indicators
• Assessing the strengths, weaknesses and costs of different evaluation strategies
• Identifying program strategy refinements that reflect what is learned from the process evaluation
• Designing grantee reporting systems that support evaluation and knowledge development
• Drafting evaluation reports to serve different audiences, including foundation staff, boards of directors, grantees and foundation peers and colleagues
• Developing evaluation tools, such as surveys and interview protocols that foundation staff can administer themselves

Industry Analysis

Blueprint conducts research and analysis and frequently speaks at conferences on trends in philanthropy. Grantmakers work in complex environments that include public, private, and nongovernmental organizations and dynamics.  Blueprint conducts independent and commissioned research and analysis of the philanthropic industry to inform clients of the trends that will affect their success and to increase the awareness and efficiency of philanthropy as a whole.  We publish regularly, maintain a blog of new ideas (Philanthropy 2173 at philanthropy2173.com), speak to individual organizations and conferences, and work with the media.  Our industry analysis work informs our client work in our other practices and our client work informs our understanding of the industry.

Activities include:

• Original research on opportunities and trends in philanthropic practice
• Policy analysis of issues relevant to philanthropy
• Applied trend analysis
• Conference presentations and meeting facilitation