Community Defined Evidence Practices
Partnering with Community-Based Organizations to Preserve & Grow Their Work.
Community-based organizations are often the birthplace of innovative and effective solutions to complex social challenges. Across the country, communities are creating programs that respond directly to their own needs. Examples include:
- Tribal communities developing programs for other Tribal members processing the impact of generational trauma
- Spanish-speaking providers building culturally and linguistically relevant services for Spanish-speaking families
- LGBTQ+ leaders supporting LGBTQ+ youth and adults through family and community rejection
- Black communities creating programs that address stress related to racism in America
- Rural parents of children with developmental disabilities cultivating solutions to access specialized care often hours away from home
- Communities coming together to repair from disasters like the 2023 Maui wildfires
These programs emerge from lived experience, cultural knowledge, and deep trust within communities. They are created by people who understand the problems firsthand and design solutions that are culturally meaningful, accessible, and responsive in ways that outside systems often struggle to achieve.
Watch the Video!
Just in time for Children's Mental Health Action Month, we developed an animation explaining the importance of community defined evidence practices and how we can work with you to support your work.
The Case for Manualizing CDEPs
Honoring Community Innovation in Mental Health Despite their impact, many of these programs operate quietly and with limited resources. Because they are often run by small teams balancing service delivery with many other responsibilities, the incredible work happening in communities frequently goes undocumented. When programs are not written down, their methods, insights, and innovations can remain invisible to the broader field—even when they are making a profound difference in people's lives.
Manualization simply means clearly describing how a program works; its goals, activities, core components, and the principles that guide its implementation. When programs are documented in this way, other communities facing similar challenges can learn from them and adapt them to their own contexts.
Manualization Results In....
Knowledge that lasts
When key leaders retire or move on, their insights don't have to leave with them. Documentation protects institutional memory and enables new staff to deliver the program with fidelity.
Evidence that Convinces
Clearly described, consistently implemented programs can be evaluated rigorously—generating the data that funders, policymakers, and researchers look for when investing in community solutions.
Solutions that Travel
When a rural program successfully addresses isolation and depression, other communities facing similar challenges should be able to learn from it. Manualization makes that possible.
Credit Where It's Due
Documenting CDEPs ensures that the communities who created these solutions are acknowledged—not overshadowed by larger institutions claiming similar work.
What Innovations Can Do for Your CDEP
We partner with community-based organizations to capture, strengthen, and scale the practices they've built. Our services are designed to meet communities where they are—and thake their work further.
Manualize Your Program
We work alongside your team to clearly document your program's goals, activities, core components, and guiding principles, creating a manual that preserves your model and makes it replicable.
Build Fidelity Tools
We develop practical instruments that help you measure whether your program is being implemented as intended, so that quality and impact are maintained as you grow or train new staff.
Identify Core Components
We help you articulate the essential elements that drive your outcomes so you know what must be preserved and what can flex across contexts.
Create Practice Profiles
We craft clear, accessible summaries of your practice for external audiences, funders, partners, and policymakers that communicate your model's value and cultural grounding.
Develop Evaluation Protocols
We partner with you to design evaluation frameworks that capture both community-defined outcomes (satisfaction, retention, referrals) and clinical outcomes (symptom reduction, skill building) because both forms of evidence matter.
Develop Training on Your Model
We can help you develop training curricula that help your program to be taught, replicated, and scaled, ensuring that the wisdom embedded in your practice can be shared with others.
A Broader View of Evidence
Community Evidence
High retention, family referrals, and participant reports like "this program saved my life" tell you the program is valued, relevant, and trusted by the community it serves.
Clinical Outcomes
Pre/post surveys measuring reductions in hopelessness or anxiety, and increases in coping skills, define the specific domains your program addresses and demonstrate measurable changes.
