Geo Education & Research is an evaluation consulting firm chartered in Washington State, serving nonprofit, government, foundation and business clients across the United States and around the world. We provide a wide range of evaluation, research and educational services using community development and empowerment approaches.
We help organizations measure and expand their success.
Our evaluation services include the following. (Click on highlighted text above for more information and examples.)
- Strategic planning for evaluation
- Developing theories of change, outcome maps and logic models to frame evaluations
- Management of evaluation processes
- Development of data collections tools
- Collection, management, analysis, display, and reporting of quantitative and qualitative data
- Development and management of web-based database systems to assist in the collection, storage and automatic analysis, display and reporting of quantitative and qualitative data (making data much more accessible and useful)
- Reporting evaluation results in standard and creative formats (written and other)
- Training and coaching others in evaluation
- Teaching evaluation at graduate and post-graduate levels
- Assisting organizations in selecting evaluators and evaluation methods.
All of these services are designed to help organizations improve their work and report their results to their funders, staff, clients and other stakeholders. Geo provides other services to help organizations with their educational and research needs.
Please see pages describing these services and educational products.
Geo Education & Research was incorporated in 2001 to conduct evaluation, research and educational consulting activities. Bill Leon, its founder and president, has been doing the similar work since 1984.
As professionals who focus most of our work on evaluation, we use the best techniques for framing and conducting evaluations, and involve clients and stakeholders in selecting the most appropriate processes and tools for each assignment. As trainers, coaches, and providers of technical assistance, we take the time to help our clients understand the philosophy and science behind the evaluation process adopted. In this way, we help them and those that they serve develop their own evaluation skills and experience so that they can be more self-sufficient in their future evaluation work. Evaluations are designed to be used, so a sustainable evaluation process has to be administered by people who understand it, support it, and use its results to improve and promote programs. We can also remain involved and help manage the process with affordable and efficient online tools and occasional consulting services.
We also engage in other types of research, mostly in the fields of environmental studies, geography and education. The links among these areas led us to become a distributor of the Earth Ball. This “beach ball” has the image of the Earth from outer space on it (real NASA photography). It is the most realistic image of the Earth available in this affordable format. We think that if more people see the Earth as it really is they will appreciate it and want to protect it more. In a similar way, we think that evaluation provides another way of more accurately seeing smaller parts of the Earth, the ones affected by particular programs. All of our work is centered on creating better visions of reality so that we can more effectively engage in improving it.