The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation identifies qualified youth-serving organizations with proven programs and growth potential and invests in developing their capacity in accordance with rigorous, customized business plans. The Foundation expands its search for such organizations by consulting experts in youth development, other foundation colleagues, and local groups.

Staff use six criteria to begin assessing whether an organization is a promising investment:

• Compelling Product - does the organization have empirical evidence proving its impact on youth?
• Strong Leadership and Management - is strong leadership and management in place–both at the staff and board levels–to lead the organization?
  
• Commitment to Evaluation - is an organization's evaluation system and ability to use data able to support sustained growth?
• Financial Viability - are the organization's finances sound?
• Operational Viability - does the organization have the capacity to deliver services reliably on a sustained basis with high quality while increasing the number of youth served?
• Compatibility with EMCF’s investment approach
  

Staff examine closely an organization’s “product” to determine whether it meets the Foundation’s standards for effectiveness. A compelling product is a program model or service that produces or seems likely to produce the outcomes the Foundation seeks. Since the Foundation is interested in proven programs, it determines its confidence in an organization and its programs by discerning three levels of effectiveness:

• Proven effectiveness, when a program’s impact on participants has been scientifically confirmed by experimental research. add link to hierarchy diagram.
• Demonstrated effectiveness, based on systematically collected data that compare program participants with similar people who are not receiving a program’s services, thus allowing an organization reasonably to conclude that young people are benefiting from program participation; and
• High-level apparent effectiveness, when an organization systematically collects data and can assume that young people are achieving the intended outcomes by participating in a specific program.

Note: the Foundation created a tool to provide a fuller explanation of these three levels: download Assessing the Impact of Programming: Three Levels of Effectiveness.

Organizations that seem likely fits for the Foundation’s grantmaking approach are added to the pool from which the Foundation selects some for an intensive assessment process called due diligence.

Although the Foundation does not accept unsolicited applications, it invites organizations that think they may qualify for support to complete the Foundation’s online Youth Organizations Survey.