by Collin Lessing, JVA Consulting

In October and November, JVA Consulting will take its show on the road to the American Evaluation Association (AEA) 2010 Conference, which takes place in San Antonio, Texas and the American Association of Grant Professionals (AAGP) 12th annual national conference in St. Pete Beach, Florida.

Randi Nelson, Nancy Zuercher, Ashley Kasprzak and Julia Alvarez, members of JVA’s research and evaluation team, will head to Texas to share ideas and best practices with evaluators from across the country. The JVA team will present two sessions: Aligning Priorities of Diverse Stakeholders Using Collaborative Evaluation Planning; and Using the Comprehensive Organizational Assessment Tool to Diagnose and Evaluate Organizational Capacity. In the first session, Randi, Nancy and Julia will explore the challenges of planning a multipurpose evaluation that meets the needs of diverse stakeholders, specifically the needs of multiple funders. In the following session, Randi and Ashley will demonstrate the 17 critical nonprofit capacity indicators of the Comprehensive Organizational Assessment (COA)—a pre-post outcome measurement tool created by JVA.

At the AAGP, JVA’s senior grant writer, Lisa Cirincione, will make two presentations:  Common Grant Applications—What Funders Really Want to Know and How One State’s Funding and Nonprofit Community Changed the Conversation. In her presentations, Lisa will share knowledge she has gathered raising more than $52 million for JVA clients and lessons learned as a member of the committee that revised the Colorado Common Grant Application (CGA) in 2008.

Locally, JVA will be presenting on similar topics in the coming weeks. On August 4, Julia Alvarez will facilitate a three-hour workshop titled How to Effectively Collect Data. “Data is an essential part of fundraising, applying for federal grants, demonstrating outcomes and so much more,” said Julia. “I’m excited to share my knowledge of working with nonprofits and collecting data from hard-to-reach populations with Denver’s nonprofit community.” To learn more and register for How to Effectively Collect Data, click here.

Come back to JVA on August 24 for Write a Grant in a Day—JVA’s full-day grant training. This popular workshop allows you to create boilerplate language for your organization’s CGA under the tutelage of one JVA’s expert grant writers. To learn more and register for Write a Grant in a Day, click here.