Brain Trust

Get expert advice on your causal work

The Causal Pathways Initiative is offering Brain Trusts as a way for funders and evaluation commissioners exploring causal questions to get advice from an expert group of complexity-aware evaluators via a small private session.

The Brain Trust is designed to decrease barriers to entry into causal pathways work and expand the models, practices, and approaches that funders have access to. This model also supports funders to efficiently meet with a group of expert advisors who deploy different methodologies within the causal pathways umbrella.

Funders and evaluation comissioners at any stage of their causal pathways work are invited to participate in the Brain Trust. From the intro call until the receipt of recommendations, a Brain Trust engagement lasts about two to three months. Email us at causalpathways@policysolve.com to set up your free intro call!

"The advisors arrived SO prepared and focused on our key hypothesis with important knowledge about how our organization works and what we were grappling with. This made all the difference in our conversation. They were easily able to point out the key gaps in our systems thinking and get us unstuck. The followup recommendations were also critical in giving us a tangible artifact from the session to catalyze our next steps."

-Brain Trust Adviseee

How it works

Intro call to assess needs

Recruiting expert advisors

Advising call discussion

A funder reaches out to the Causal Pathways Initiative Project Manager to set up an intro call. The funder will then meet virtually with the Project Manager and a Co-Director to learn more about the Brain Trust, explain their needs, and discuss next steps. The Initiative leads will pose a series of questions to learn more about the questions the funder is asking, the context of their work, and timeline. This information will be used to help identify key characteristics when recruiting Brain Trust Advisors, the number of Advisors needed, logistics, and pre-read materials.

The Causal Pathways leads will reach out to the Causal Pathways Network to identify expert advisors for the Brain Trust, matching their knowledge to the context, need, and what the funder is hoping to achieve. The date will be confirmed and Brain Trust Advisors will review pre-read materials and meet with each other in advance to prepare for the advising call.

A facilitator, the funder, Project Manager, and Brain Trust Advisors will come together for a two-hour facilitated dialogue to explore the questions posed by the funder. During these calls, advisors will offer multiple ways of bringing a causal pathways lens into the funder’s work. These are highly customized conversations and will look different depending on the focus of the advising request.

Each Brain Trust Advisor will be asked to email final thoughts within a week of the session. These thoughts will be compiled and sent to the funder in an email, along with the contact information for all of the participating advisors.

Follow up

Funders that engage with our Brain Trust will walk away with guidance on how to address their specific causal pathways questions and concerns, as well as with relationships and contacts with experienced evaluators that are experts at conducting evaluations through a causal pathways lens.

Cost

The cost of a typical session is approximately $6,000, depending on the number of advisors, most of which goes to the expert advisors for their time engaging before, during, and after the advisory call. Within this, the Initiative also includes a small fee for staff time in setting up the Brain Trust and managing Advisor logistics and payment.

Don’t let the price tag stop you from reaching out! We will do our best to work with you on your budget, thanks to support from our generous funders.

Advisor Network

Advisors for the Brain Trust are expert evaluators and deeply experienced in causal pathways evaluations and evaluating in complex, dynamic settings. Advisors are members of the Causal Pathways Network and meet regularly. They lead Causal Pathways Initiative trainings and share their recent work through Causal Pathways Initiative Coffee Breaks. More on our Advisor Network can be found here.

Self Assessment

Funders can ask themselves the following questions to help determine if now is the right moment to engage with the Brain Trust?

Do you have a learning or evaluation question that asks about why things are the way they are or why you are seeing/not seeing changes?
Would it be helpful to hear different ideas of how to approach understanding what, why, and for whom the change is happening?
Are you unsatisfied with evaluations that measure outcomes, but aren’t able to tell you how, why, and under what conditions these outcomes are emerging?
Do you have 4 hours to commit to the intro call, sharing material, the Brain Trust advising session, and reviewing advisors’ recommendations?

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