Search Institute Consulting

There are times when a youth program or coalition needs consulting for help with a particular challenge. For this, Search Institute works closely with people who directly touch young people’s lives.

Youth Program Consulting

Our researchers and senior staff regularly consult with youth programs, organizations and coalitions to help overcome issues, collaborate across boundaries, and bring new solutions to old problems.

Our consulting is grounded in the same core conviction that guides all of Search Institute’s work: building on the strengths and resilience of young people, their families, and their communities. We have found this strength-based approach is a more effective way to improve outcomes than focusing on deficits or risks.

Search Institute consulting services help our partners find solutions in three critical endeavors: measurement, engagement and improvement. In each of these areas, working with a Search Institute expert is an investment that will help to produce improved organizational performance to help programs succeed.

Measurement Services

With our measurement services, we can help you achieve the following objectives:

  • Design measurement strategies that fit your organization or community’s priorities and capacities.
  • Develop a comprehensive understanding of young people’s experiences in schools and youth programs through a mix of quantitative (surveys) and qualitative (interviews, observation, and focus groups) methods.
  • Utilize data from Search Institute surveys and other sources to improve young people’s non-cognitive skills, social-emotional strengths, and other factors that influence their success in school and in life.
  • Effectively administer validated surveys to ensure that data are accurate, valid, reliable, and timely, while minimizing the burden on youth and program staff.
  • Develop customized measures of the strengths and supports in young people’s lives to align with the goals and priorities of schools, youth programs, and community coalitions.

Engagement Services

Engagement services help partners engage youth, parents, and other grassroots leaders to achieve the following objectives:

  • Strengthen collective impact. By creating intentional efforts, you can engage individuals and groups who are not always at the table to support community youth development or education initiatives.
  • Identify strategies for diverse groups of people to contribute to shared goals, based on their strengths and priorities.
  • Build bridges for youth development and education priorities to work together across different cultures, sectors, and ideologies.
  • Encourage sustained commitment to collective goals, actions, and impact.

Improvement Services

Improvement Services help partners achieve the following objectives:

  • Apply Search Institute’s research on Developmental Assets, developmental relationships, thriving, family strengths, and other subjects to your work with youth and families.
  • Summarize current research on education and youth development to inform program planning and organizational improvement.
  • Develop logic models that link program components to desired outcomes with funding proposals, improvement plans, and evaluations.
  • Facilitate data-guided improvement processes that clarify objectives and assumptions, build relationships within and across organizations, and use trial-and-error strategies to continuously improve outcomes.

How to Partner with Search Institute

Search Institute works closely with each partner to define expected results and commit to deliverable solutions. Our consulting fees are determined by the scope of each engagement.
To learn more ways that Search Institute’s consulting services can help you achieve your objectives, click below. A client relations specialist will contact you to explore the possibilities.