Healthy Children's Fund External Evaluation

Seva Workshop led the external process and performance evaluation covering the period from planning, inception, and early implementation of Whatcom County’s Healthy Children’s Fund (HCF) from January 1, 2023 to July 31, 2025. This evaluation adopts a Results-Based Accountability (RBA) framework, centering three key questions:

• How much did we do? (Performance assessment)
• How well did we do it? (Process assessment)
• Is anyone better off? (Population assessment)

The evaluation includes quantitative and qualitative methods, including interviews with staff, providers, and families engaged with the HCF. Seva Workshop developed a deep dive sample of eight contracted organizations for which we conducted a close review of the bidding and selection process, invoicing, and qualitative implementation.

After isolating key findings and issues from these data, Seva Workshop developed a comprehensive set of recommendations by conducting a review of literature from local and national organizations as well as peer counties, and by facilitating an in-person workshop with Whatcom County staff to reflect on findings, identify root causes, and propose solutions.

Seva Workshop provided thirty-six recommendations that span a variety of scales and investments in time and resources to meaningfully improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency of the administration of the Healthy Children’s Fund. Recommendations fall under six core areas, addressing long-term planning, evaluation and monitoring, internal processes and procedures, institutional capacity, procurement policy, and external communications and engagement. Each recommendation is accompanied by actionable steps to support a smooth implementation.