Agency Description: Bolder Options was founded by its current Executive Director, Darrell Thompson, former Minnesota Gopher and NFL athlete. The organization focuses its efforts on a specific group: at-risk youth 10-14 years old who reside in Minneapolis, Golden Valley, Robbinsdale, St Louis Park, and Richfield. Bolder Options centers its mentor-youth interaction on fun, challenging athletic activities—specifically running and biking. The program is small and highly directed, so mentors and financial supporters can easily see the positive impacts they make. Bolder Options' mission is "teaching youth to succeed in ALL of life's races."

ACET services: Bolder Options has been a client of ACET since the spring of 2005. Bolder Options has a solid history of utilizing evaluation results in multiple ways including increasing staff’s ability to better understand the needs of their target population, improving the program to better meet the needs of the youth they serve, and educating the community about the impact of the program. As a result of using the results of the evaluation, Bolder Options has experienced significant organizational growth. As the organization has grown, their evaluation needs have evolved, and in 2009 ACET provided consultation of revisions to Bolder Option’s logic model and evaluation plan. Revisions to the logic model and evaluation plan demanded changes to the instruments used for youth, parents, and mentors; ACET further assisted in developing these surveys that would properly measure the new outcomes of the program. ACET also provided technical assistance in development of an online version of the surveys. ACET also continued to conduct focus groups with parents of youth and several personal interviews in both English and Spanish. ACET disseminates all of the evaluation information in Bolder Option’s Annual Report and has also provided summary reports in the form of PowerPoint presentations.

In 2008, ACET also guided Bolder Options through a Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) process in order to build Bolder Options' capacity in regard to accountability systems, program assessment, and program effectiveness. ACET held two meetings with Bolder Options staff to describe how CQI could benefit the agency and what a successful implementation of CQI would look like. ACET then began implementing the first round of CQI over a two-day "retreat," which focused on agency processes. After the retreat, ACET constructed a twelve-month template for staff work plans. Plans included a description of what a successful process change would look like, methods to collect data and document the process change, and a timeline for revisiting the work plan. Lastly, ACET developed a plan for evaluating CQI progress.

In 2009, ACET provided professional consultation on revisions to Bolder Options’ logic model and evaluation plan. Revisions to the logic model and evaluation plan demanded changes in the instruments used for youth, parents, and mentors. ACET further assisted in developing surveys that would properly measure the new outcomes of the program. ACET provided technical assistance in development of an online version of the surveys. To gain further information, ACET conducted focus groups with parents of youth participating in the program as well as several personal interviews in both English and Spanish with the parents of several youth in the program. All of the survey and interview data were incorporated in Bolder Option’s Annual Report, as well as a PowerPoint presentation to share with stakeholders and funders.

Date of Service: 2005-Present