The Mission

STEMblazers inspires girls to visualize themselves in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math professions. We envision a world where women are equally represented in the STEM workforce.

The Situation

STEMblazers operates after-school programming, events, and other support aimed at students traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields. In order to engage with local schools, attract corporate partners, and acquire funding, it is critical that STEMblazers be able to clearly convey the impacts and value of its program and create reporting for funders.

Limitations of a legacy impact evaluation plan made it difficult to answer key questions from STEMblazers stakeholders, and current survey tools did not provide the data needed for meaningful analysis. Without an effective way to measure and understand the impacts its programs drive, STEMblazers found it difficult to identify areas of strength and opportunity, or to clearly communicate outcomes to its board, potential donors/partners, or members.

Solutions Delivered

• Impactful Insights partnered with STEMblazers leadership to develop an impact evaluation plan, which helped to connect the dots between program activities and outcomes. The plan included clear definition of goals and success criteria, identification of appropriate internal and external benchmarks, as well as clear articulation of research methods, data needs, and plans for data collection.

• Next, we created surveys and other research tools to capture the data necessary to measure the key outcomes defined in the impact evaluation plan. This included interview protocols, start- and end-of-semester surveys, meeting feedback surveys, and alumni surveys.

• We provided training for chapter leaders, so they could assist in survey distribution and increasing response rates. Through continued communication, we created a feedback loop to remove barriers and improve students’ experience with surveys in order to make the process more seamless and enable improved data capture.

• At the end of the first two semesters, Impactful Insights performed in-depth data analysis of the data collected and curated results for STEMblazers leadership, surfacing data-driven narratives to help tell STEMblazers’ impact story, as well as highlighting insights about members’ experiences, progress against goals, and clear recommendations for program enhancements.

• After developing and implementing streamlined and repeatable processes to manage data collection and analysis, we facilitated a successful handoff to STEMblazers staff for ongoing data collection and report creation.