Each year the Stand-To Veteran Leadership Program (VLP), a program of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, selects accomplished leaders with a strong desire to impact veteran issues from across the country and brings them together through a five-month intensive leadership training program, culminating in a personal leadership project for each VLP Scholar. Since 2018, the Evaluation Team has served as external evaluators for this program through both surveys and in-person observations of program activities.

UTR helps families establish and maintain reading routines by providing the tools and books for service members (and veterans) to record themselves reading so that they can be a part of story time with their loved ones despite training schedules, deployments, or injury recovery. The Evaluation Team has developed measures to assess program outcomes within the domains of child literacy, child well-being, family well-being, family connection, and service member/caregiver morale and is currently implementing them in a longitudinal survey of program participants.

TBR, the college system of Tennessee, provides training programs, guidelines, and a certification to help institutions within their system better support student veterans’ academic success. Our team is evaluating the original strategies presented by the Veterans Education Task Force to identify whether state policy actions have adequately addressed barriers to student veteran access and completion at TBR community colleges and colleges of applied technology. These efforts include an inventory filled out by representatives of each TBR institution, surveys of staff/faculty and students, and focus groups with students.

WQW brings “Warriors” – combat veterans – to their ranch in southwestern Montana where they are provided a safe and secure environment that feels like home. Through fly fishing and time in nature, Warriors find space to make meaning of their service and discover what a purposeful life means to them. Our team has worked with WQW since 2021 to evaluate and explain the impact these experiences have on participants. Each year as WQW adds programing to provide greater impact, we have observed Warriors thriving both in the short and long term after their participation with WQW.

The Veteran Wellness Alliance is an innovative alliance that connects high-quality care providers and veteran peer networks to empower veterans to seek mental health treatment. With proper care, service members and veterans can continue to thrive on and off the battlefield. IVMF has worked with the VWA since 2020 to help them implement Check-In, a mental health service that provides a place for peer-based organizations to connect their members to mental and brain health care. Since the inception of Check-In, over 500 veterans and military connected family members have been referred to high quality mental and brain health care.