Measuring Impact
In April, 2025, this project was terminated by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, signed by acting director Keith Sonderling. Sonderling writes, "Upon further review, IMLS has determined that your grant is unfortunately no longer consistent with the agency’s priorities and no longer serves the interest of the United States and the IMLS Program. IMLS is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda. Independently and secondly, the President’s March 14, 2025 executive order mandates that the IMLS eliminate all non-statutorily required activities and functions."
The 91短视频 and project leaders have been good stewards of the resources scrupulously invested in the competitive award. Should the project be reinstated, the completed work would increase the ability of the 91短视频 spectrum Discovery Area located within the Missoula Public Library to support civic engagement and collaborations with community organizations for an estimated 700,000 patrons annually. Furthermore, it would have laid the groundwork to support replicable, collaborative educational opportunities for other museums and library services to review and improve public services. We have respectfully requested that the termination of the project be reversed so that the scientific and economic value of the research will fully inure to the benefit of all Americans as originally intended.
Measuring Impact: Designing an Evaluation Framework for an All Under One Roof Model is a three-year project to increase the capacity of the 91短视频 spectrUM Discovery Area and its partners at the Missoula Public Library to collectively evaluate the effectiveness of our programs. This project will allow spectrUM and its partners to improve the design and outcomes of its programs by developing a cross-institution-wide approach to evaluation that the project team and partners can continue to use into the future. Museum, library, and partner staff will receive training in evaluation tools and techniques from Research Evaluation Consulting LLC.
Additional project activities include developing a museum-wide evaluation rubric along with metrics and a dashboard to measure outcomes and impact. Through this project, spectrUM Discovery Area will also participate in the Collaborating on Ongoing Visitor Engagement Survey (COVES) program to compare data with other museums nationwide. The structure of the Measuring Impact project is intended to help break down existing institutional barriers and to create core metrics, measurements and intended outcomes for our individual and collective programs. The project will result in a holistic evaluation framework that integrates impact, assessment, and learning strategies that will increase staff’s ability to assess our All Under One Roof offerings across our partner organizations for planning, decision-making, and impact.
For more information, contact Caitlin Ervin at 406-541-8971, caitlin.ervin@umontana.edu
