Nonprofit Leader Tiffany Gueye: How an Education Charity Rigorously Measures Results

During The Chronicle’s first live event, Philanthropy NEXT: Demonstrate Impact, Inspire Donors, staff writer Eden Stiffman sat down with Tiffany Gueye, chief executive of Building Educated Leaders for Life (BELL), a nonprofit working to bring education equality to children in low-income communities. (Soon after the September 16 event, Ms. Gueye announced she would leave the organization in June 2017.)

During Ms. Gueye’s tenure, BELL has taken part in two randomized controlled studies, which she calls “the gold standard” of research tools to measure a nonprofit’s effectiveness. In this video interview, she offers advice on what to expect when subjecting your organization’s work to rigorous, independent evaluation, securing donor and staff support for the studies, and integrating the results into storytelling about your mission.

Ms. Gueye also discusses BELL’s partnership with the YMCA and how the education group established a strong relationship with a bigger organization to scale up its programs.

Note: A previous version of this article referred to Tiffany Gueye as the former CEO. She plans to remain in the job until June 2017.

TRANSCRIPT

EDEN STIFFMAN: Hi. I’m Eden Stiffman, a reporter with “The Chronicle of Philanthropy.” I’m joined by Tiffany Gueye, the CEO of Building Educated Leaders for Life, or BELL. Thanks for being with us.

TIFFANY GUEYE: Thank you for having me.

EDEN STIFFMAN: Can you briefly tell us about BELL’s mission and what you do?

TIFFANY GUEYE: Sure. BELL exists to transform the educational achievements and life trajectories of children living in low income communities. We basically believe that all children have enormous potential, but children attending high poverty schools often need additional supports outside of school in order to reach their potential.

EDEN STIFFMAN: All right. Thank you. And under your leadership, the organization has participated in two randomly controlled studies, and I’m wondering if you can tell us about how you get buy-in from your staff and board to participate in such a rigorous evaluation?

TIFFANY GUEYE: Sure. Randomized control trial studies come at enormous expense and they often come at enormous operational costs as well, with so many staff needing to get rallied behind it and cooperative with the data collection protocols. It also requires the parents and the families involved to provide consent and to provide cooperation with the studies. So randomized control trials are an enormous deal.

The way we’ve worked to get buy-in is to, as much as possible, secure a dedicated funding source for the study so that we don’t feel like we’re trading off actual program dollars for a study, because we have restricted dollars for it. That helps a lot. The way to get staff buy-in is to ensure that we’re asking questions with our study that the staff will ultimately find useful.

And the final thing I would say about it is to not do them so often that your staff throws up their hands and says, I can’t do another one. So BELL has invested in two randomized control test studies so far. They were spaced about seven years apart. And so our last one was in 2012, and we’ll probably wait another couple of years before we even introduce the idea again.

EDEN STIFFMAN: Do you have any tips for other organizations who may be looking to do this about seeking funding and what you found works well?

TIFFANY GUEYE: Sure. I think people hold up, the sector holds up, randomized control trial studies as the gold standards. And in fact, they do offer a special kind of validity to a study and a lack of bias that’s really valuable. But my first piece of advice would be for an organization to strongly consider whether they need a randomized control trial study. It will come at enormous expense and a lot of trade off operationally. And so I think it’s important to decide, is that important for the organization? Will it answer a question that another kind of study wouldn’t answer?

But if they decide to go down that route, I would say talk to your biggest existing funders about additional support for a study or about other prospects they might have.

EDEN STIFFMAN: And so once you’ve gone through one of these studies and you have this really great data set, how do you decide what to share with donors and how to weigh that with more qualitative storytelling methods?

TIFFANY GUEYE: Yes. That’s a good question. With randomized control trial studies, they’re often done by an independent research firm. And they have complete rights to publication. And I think that provides a valuable sort of wall between researchers who are looking at this in an unbiased way, looking at your research question and your program in an unbiased way.

And so they will publish what they find relative to the questions and you won’t have much say actually in how to combine that with qualitative data or with storytelling or other things. It will stand alone and it will be published independently. So that’s an important risk you take with those kind of studies. I would say never an RCT in isolation without other forms of data collection. So ensure that somebody, whether it’s an independent source or your own staff, is also collecting that qualitative data so that you can round out the story. I think that’s going to be really important.

EDEN STIFFMAN: And I know that BELL has a partnership with the YMCA. And through that partnership, you’ve really been able to scale up your summer learning programs. I’m curious what you think makes for a successful partnership and what you recommend for other organizations looking to scale up in a similar way.

TIFFANY GUEYE: Sure. BELL’s collaboration with the YMCA is really wonderful and incredible and it’s one of my favorite things about coming to work is the collaboration we’ve created with the YMCA. What it allows us to do as an organization is serve more kids than we otherwise would have alone. And it allows the YMCA to have an impact it wouldn’t have been able to have on its own.

And so we’re more than 1 plus 1. We end up with this three or more effect by adding our two sets of assets together. And it’s incredible. I would say one secret ingredient that is often underestimated when other organizations try to collaborate is trust. And so our two organizations took the time to get to know each other.

And we could sort of sit at a table and look at each other in the eye and know that each was both trying to serve children. Neither of us was trying to get some sort of advantage or take advantage especially of the other. We were each trying to serve kids and serve them well. And because we believe that about each other, we had a special kind of trust.

And that has really been nurtured over time and allowed our relationship to thrive.

EDEN STIFFMAN: And we’re heading into the last few months of the year. I’m curious what you’re thinking about going into this often intense fund-raising season.

TIFFANY GUEYE: So we are fortunate in that our fiscal year is July 1 to June 30. And that’s somewhat based on the fact that we run summer programs and so our seasonality is a little bit different. But it is a relief to not be at a December 31st fiscal year end. But top of mind for us always, because fund-raising is ongoing all the time, is rebuilding the pipeline all the time.

We are so grateful for the generous support we get from our donors. And we’re always working to steward their support and be in touch with them and strengthen our relationships. The challenge always is, how do we get more donors interested in our work, aware of our work, and considering the support? Because the donors that sustain you today, they go through strategic plans of their own.

They go through staff changes of their own. And you can’t always count on them forever. And so building the pipeline of new supporters is always what we’re thinking about.

EDEN STIFFMAN: Well, thank you for your time today. We appreciate it.

TIFFANY GUEYE: Thank you.