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  • Blog
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  • Our Approach
    • Social Impact
    • Thought Partnership
    • Accessible Information
    • Commitment to Equity
  • What We Do
    • Strategy Development
    • Theory of Change
    • Evaluation
      • Advocacy & Policy Evaluation
      • Network Evaluation
      • Systems Evaluation
    • Measurements Learning Evaluation Practice (MLE)
      • MLE Development & Support
      • MLE Lab
  • About Us
    • Team
    • Board
    • Clients
    • Careers
    • Connect
    • 30 Gives 30 Award
  • Blog
  • Publications

Thought Partners for
Social Innovators

We deliver consultations that provide insights and support confident action, specializing in the complicated, messy, and complex that characterizes so much of the meaningful work our clients do to support social change.

Black Lives Matter.

 

Our commitment to race equity > 

 

Report: social change

Not Always Movements

How are we trying to make change? Explore different approaches for large scale social change.

Read the Report

 

Postponed

MLE Lab 2020

In response to COVID-19,
MLE Lab 2020 will be rescheduled.  

Learn more >

Brief: Defensive Advocacy

When the Best Offense is a Good Defense

A brief that outlines how to understand and measure defensive advocacy.

 Read the Brief

 

study: Collective impact

When Collective Impact has an Impact 

Read more about this research study recently completed by ORS Impact and Spark Policy Institute.

Read the Report

ORS Impact

Evaluating

Leadership for

Social Change

Read the Report 

Brief: Contribution analysis

Looking for “contribution, not attribution.” How do we do that? 

ORS Impact’s Carlyn Orians, with co-writers Claire Reinelt, Robin Kane and Carlisle Levine offer answers in their new brief.

Read the Report

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The ORS Impact team has earned a global reputation for leadership, insight and innovation.

We work collaboratively with our clients, bringing our distinctive expertise in planning, measurement and evaluation to their most vexing challenges.

Meet the Team

"ORS Impact helped surface some really important questions, particularly for leadership. We valued their insights as well as their excellent work."
- Foundation Director of Research and Evaluation

Our Clients

PUBLICATIONS

Access our Resources & Publications


Feature Report

Measuring Narrative Change

Narrative change is a complex, long-term and culturally embedded strategy for driving social change, involving many different actors and activities over time. This poses challenges for measuring progress and impact. In this guide, we compiled frameworks, resources, and tools to help users conceptualize and evaluate progress toward narrative change. This is v1.0. Look for the next version in Spring of 2021. 

Download >
See all Publications

 

Feature report

Informing Advocacy and Communication Capacity Building Efforts

The Gates Foundation engaged ORS Impact to develop a culturally relevant, methodologically rigorous tool to learn more about successful capacity building. This brief shares that tool, which may help advocates and foundations understand what constitutes strong advocacy and communications, as well as opportunities to build capacity and understand how it is changing over time.

Download >


Feature report

Situating the Next Generation of Impact Measurement and Evaluation for Impact Investing 

A typology for structuring and thinking about a next generation of impact measurement and evaluation for impact investing.

Download

   

OUR WORK

Since 1989, we've been delivering deep value into our client's organizations


Featured project

When Collective Impact Has an Impact

ORS Impact and Spark Policy Institute completed a rigorous study to understand when and how collective impact contributes to systems and population change. Looking across 25 initiatives working on different focus areas, the study looks at the contribution and outcomes of collective impact, the design and implementation of the collective impact approach, with a specific deep-dive into equity.

Read More >

 

BLOG

Our latest news and insights


Latest News

A long overdue update on our journey to advance equity
Four years ago, we set an intention around equity. We knew doing nothing was not an option and good intentions were not good enough. It had been a long time since we had posted about this work—too long—and we’ve been hard at work to advance racial equity within our company and through our work since that time. More recent events this year again led us to make a public statement and reaffirm our commitment to continue this work. We decided it was time for an update on what we’re actually doing, so here’s an update on our work over the past four years to live our commitment.
 
   
 
1100 Olive Way, Suite 1350, Seattle, WA 98101
206.728.0474     ors@orsimpact.com