Highlighted Clients
Building Changes
Building Changes is a non-profit organization working as an intermediary to pull together government, philanthropy, and nonprofit organizations in a collective effort to impact family and youth homelessness in Washington State. Since 2016, Clarus has worked closely with Building Changes to refine their measurement, learning, and evaluation strategies; conduct needs assessments for program planning; and evaluate their grant projects, including analyzing grantee and other data. Clarus executed a statewide study, mixed-methods study examining whether and how efforts to divert families from the homeless crisis response system are effective and result in equitable outcomes for families of color.
Children's Bureau, Administration for Children and Families,
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
In addition to our work with the Children’s Bureau Capacity Building Center for States, Clarus Research has served as a reviewer of and local evaluator on HHS grants and cooperative agreements. For example, we led a multi-site, mixed-methods evaluation of implementation efforts to create trauma-informed child welfare systems on three tribal reservations in Montana and co-led an experimental, mixed-methods implementation and outcome evaluation of family team conferencing models in Alachua County, Florida.
Equal Justice Works
Equal Justice Works is a non-profit that provides training and opportunities for law students and lawyers to explore and increase their dedication to careers in public service. Clarus conducted formative, mixed-methods evaluations of their Disaster Recovery Legal Corps and Rural Legal Summer Corps programs through which legal Fellows provide legal services to low-income and marginalized communities.
ICF International
Clarus currently is a partner with ICF International, providing evaluation capacity building assistance and subject matter expertise on implementation science, continuous quality improvement, and other content areas via the Child Welfare Capacity Building Center for States. The Center for States is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Children’s Bureau to help public child welfare organizations and professionals build the capacity necessary to strengthen, implement, and sustain effective child welfare practice and to achieve better outcomes for children, youth, and families. Through this project, the Clarus team has supported multiple child welfare improvement efforts in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Texas. In Arizona, California, and Kansas, Clarus provides technical assistance to enhance engagement with federally-recognized Tribes.
Office of Inspector General,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is responsible for enforcing federal laws to protect job applicants or employees from discrimination based on race, color, religion, pregnancy, gender identify, sexual orientation, national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. To process discrimination charges, the EEOC contracts with approximately 90 Fair Employment Practice Agencies (FEPAs) nationwide to process over 48,000 discrimination charges annually. Clarus was selected to evaluate the EEOC’s management and oversight of FEPAs. Clarus designed and is currently implementing a mix-methods evaluation study using the following methods: surveys, interviews, focus groups, and a systematic document review. The evaluation employs a utilization-focused approach to facilitate the use of evaluation findings by the EEOC. Evidence-based recommendations from the evaluation will focus on improving processes and products that support FEPAs in meeting case quality standards.
National Fish & Wildlife Foundation
NFWF is the largest private conservation grant-maker in the country, working with the public and private sectors to restore our fish, wildlife, plants, and habitat. Clarus has been co-principal investigator with Dantzker Consulting and others on evaluations of important NFWF programs. For the Innovative Nutrient and Sediment Reduction (INSR) Grants Program, we evaluated the innovative practices of more than 100 grantees to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay. Clarus led the development and administration of complex surveys to study grantee dissemination of INSR-funded best management practices (BMPs) and wider adoption of those INSR-funded BMPs among stakeholders across the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
National Women's Law Center
The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) fights for gender justice – in the courts, in public policy, and in society – working across all issues that are central to the lives of women and girls and driving solutions to address gender inequities that harm all of us. NWLC selected Clarus Research to help them develop and launch a Community Impact Fund (CIF). The Goal of the CIF is to help communities identify and lead strategies to address the lack of affordable early childhood education and poor compensation of early childhood educators across our country – particularly for families and early educators who identify and BIPOC and/or immigrant families and women. The CIF features a participatory grassroots grant development process. Working with community advocates in two states, the Clarus team applies an implementation-science based strategic planning framework to guide participants through: conducting deeper problem exploration and root cause analysis using local and national data; developing a sound theory of change for achieving desired outcomes; identifying strategies to address root causes and contributing factors; and developing a sound evaluation approach to understand whether and how strategies resulted in desired outcomes. The planning process will culminate in a request for proposals to be distributed across the two states. NWLC will fund and support successful proposals to implement identified strategies and conduct a formative evaluation to learn about what works in communities to improve outcomes. Pending evaluation outcomes, the CIF is expected to be spread to other states.
University of Southern California, Suzanne Dworak-Peck
School of Social Work
Since 2014, Clarus Research has led numerous evaluation and research studies for the School. For example, we designed and conducted a longitudinal evaluation of the School’s Virtual Academic Center field practicum. We also conducted a formative, mixed-methods process and outcomes evaluation of the Law Enforcement Advanced Development (LEAD) Certificate Pilot Program, in which the School’s faculty trains select Los Angeles County police officers to interact more productively with diverse and vulnerable communities. In addition, Clarus led the School in redesigning its system for assessing student learning outcomes for re-accreditation by the Council on Social Work Education and conducted a secondary analysis of administrative data to identify factors that facilitate and hinder MSW student success in field placement and graduation.
