Evaluation Projects

Face the Fight (FTF) is a coalition founded by USAA to bring together corporations, foundations, nonprofits, and veteran-focused organizations to raise awareness and support for veteran suicide prevention. IVMF joined the coalition in early 2024 to implement geospatial technology and provide organizations with enhanced data on their veteran and military clients. This enhanced data allows organizations to provide more timely and accurate services to veterans in need of support.

The Medal of Honor Museum Foundation is comprised of three primary components: the National Medal of Honor Museum, the National Medal of Honor Griffin Institute, and the future National Medal of Honor Monument. The Griffin Institute seeks to impact the leadership journey of children and adults to support and encourage them to lead with character, integrity, and excellence.  The Museum, opening in Arlington, Texas in March 2025, will provide programming and experiences that inspire learning, enjoyment, and knowledge-sharing about the Medal of Honor and its Recipient stories. Together, the programs are designed to inspire, equip, and connect program and museum attendees for a life of success and significance – in service of the greater good and our nation. The Evaluation Team is assisting the Museum and the Griffin Institute develop theories of change for themselves and their individual program that fit within the larger strategy and mission of the Foundation. Once these theories of change are finalized, the Evaluation Team will develop an evaluation plan for both organizations.

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.

Warriors & Quiet Waters (WQW) serves post-9/11 combat veterans through a 9-month, transformational program: Built for More. This program is intentionally designed to address the six pillars of a thriving life: Security, Connection, Values, Identity, Potential, and Purpose. Veterans in the program complete guided online modules for each pillar, grounded in holistic wellness. The program is bookended by peak experiences in the wild places of Southwest Montana. IVMF has worked with WQW since 2021, and evaluates the long-term outcomes of the Built for More program through a series of participant surveys. 

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.

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.

This project evaluated three separate programs within the ENVSC’s “Welcome Home Initiative”: The Welcome Home Kit program, the Focus Grant program, and the Emergency Assistance Fund, as part of the ENVSC’s Better Business Bureau accreditation requirements. Each program is designed to assist veterans who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. The evaluation team conducted interviews with Elks members and community partners, a survey of Elks members, and a thorough review of existing data surrounding the program. Deliverables included both a full report and 10-page visual report detailing findings and recommendations for the initiative.

The Mission Continues provides veterans a way to continue their service within their communities through their service platoons, mass deployments, and leadership programs. The evaluation team reviewed and provided recommendations for the various surveys used by The Mission Continues to collect data throughout the year. Additionally, the team wrote a job description for a new evaluation position, including where this could sit within the existing organizational chart and tips for the hiring process.

The work of Travis Manion Foundation (TMF) is rooted in the belief that veterans and families of the fallen are among America’s greatest civic assets, and that the path toward bridging the civilian-military divide and uniting our communities begins by empowering our military community. IVMF worked with TMF to study the effectiveness of TMF initiatives on improving the level of thriving and well-being among TMF members’, including veterans, families of the fallen, and civilians. Using a mix-methods approach, IVMF found that people who participated in more TMF programs experienced greater thriving and TMF members felt more connected to one another and their community which led to improvements in their mental and physical health, and ultimately greater well-being and thriving.

The Washington State Department of Veteran Affairs (WDVA) Vet Corps program is funded by AmeriCorps. Started in 2005, the program stations individuals, referred to as Vet Corps Members (VCMs), at colleges, universities, and community organizations throughout Washington. IVMF conducted two evaluations with WDVA from 2019 – 2023 and found the Vet Corps program had a positive impact on student veterans that seek assistance from Vet Corps Members (VCM), student veterans on campuses with Vet Corps Members, and on the Vet Corps Members themselves. We found higher GPAs for veterans on campuses with Vet Corps members, compared to student veterans without a VCM on campus. Additionally, we found higher graduation rates for student veterans that seek assistance from VCMs and student veterans on campuses with VCMs compared to student veterans without a VCM on campus. We also found lower dropout rates for student veterans that seek assistance from VCMs compared to student veterans without a VCM on campus. Additionally, VCMs strengthened their leadership skills, felt more employable, had a stronger sense of purpose, reported increased likeliness to engage in community service and had improved well-being.

The primary goal of the project with Warrior Scholar Project (WSP), which provides veteran-specific academic preparatory courses for individuals transitioning from the military to higher education, was to equip the organization with a foundation of evidence, theory, and data to support and improve its programs as well as to communicate its impact on WSP program alumni. After an initial discovery phase and requirements gathering, the project was divided into three distinct but converging workstreams: Evidence, consisting of a literature review and landscape analysis of similar programs; Theory, a reevaluation of program purpose, approach, and goals; and Data, the assessment of program surveys, current data analysis, and analysis of alumni survey data.