Excellence in Giving expands EIG Insights with Acquisition of Edessa Research

July 23, 2024 –- Excellence in Giving’s, research division, EIG Insights has expanded its team and services after a year of exciting, high value projects. Excellence in Giving has acquired Edessa Research, a firm specializing in monitoring & evaluation consulting for international development non-profit organizations to create additional capacity for EIG Insights 

EIG Insights, co-founded by Al Mueller and Kate Williams-Whitley, has been providing evaluation and program services to over a dozen organizations in the Christian Relief, Development, and Nonprofit spaces since February 2023. Since Al Mueller founded Excellence in Giving in 2002, Al Mueller has witnessed an ever-increasing need for organizations to provide more, and higher quality, evidence of impact to their donor base. The mutual recognition of this need is what brought Al Mueller and Kate Williams-Whitley together in February 2023. As a leader in driving the Christian nonprofit sector towards stronger evidence-based programs and impact evaluations, most recently at Compassion International, Kate Williams-Whitley joined Excellence in Giving to launch EIG Insights.  
 
Over the past year and a half, Kate Williams-Whitley has led a team of researchers to address complex program and evaluation needs at organizations such as: Mentoring Alliance, AWANA, World Relief, Tyndale Foundation, Biblica, Herzog Foundation, Langham Partnership, Zoe Empowers, Elevate USA, Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries, and many others.  

For two decades I have watched organizations desire to achieve their missions but be unable to demonstrate their impact. The work that we get to do at EIG Insights, with the team led by the talented Kate Williams-Whitley, is helping organizations improve programs and communicate more strongly with their donors. I am thrilled to see our team expanding to reach more organizations. 

[Al Mueller, Founder and CEO of Excellence in Giving, Co-Founder of EIG Insights] 

Since 2018, Edessa Research has specialized in serving the international development and humanitarian sector by helping clients to better understand how their programs and products bring about change through providing evidence of program effectiveness for management and learning. To date, Edessa has worked with organizations combatting human trafficking in India, training pastors in South Sudan, delivering safe water in Malawi, and providing sanitation services in Honduras, among other projects. Founded by Kristen Check, Edessa was created to fill a niche in equipping Christian non-profit organizations to effectively monitor & evaluate their programs. 

“After working for 10 years in the non-profit sector and being highly engaged in the Christian international development community, I realized there was a need for skilled monitoring & evaluation (M&E) professionals who also understood the importance of spirituality and faith in poverty alleviation. It was then that I founded Edessa Research. I believed that with a group of Christian M& E experts, we could make a big difference for organizations who needed to begin measuring, improve their measurement, or show the impact of their programs to their donors and partners. I have great respect for Kate Williams-Whitley and feel incredibly blessed to be able to continue this work and Edessa’s mission as part of EIG Insights.”

[Kristen Check, VP, EIG Insights, & Founder/Lead Consultant, Edessa Research] 

Edessa brings to EIG Insights a team of consultants with over 15 years of experience working with Christian non-profit organizations across 12 sectors and 30 countries, along with a passion for helping clients “measure what matters”. Edessa will become part of the EIG Insights team and will continue to offer clients the same excellent client experience, services, and expertise they have come to know from Edessa.  Kristen Check will now serve as VP of EIG Insights. 
 
With the acquisition of Edessa Research, EIG Insights will enhance its current offerings of providing monitoring & evaluation services such as: theory of change and measurement framework development, program evaluations, causation-based impact evaluations, and market research. Our offerings also include in-house M&E services (annual program outcome monitoring, reporting, etc.) to organizations who prefer to outsource their needs to a team of professionals.  

Excellence in Giving: Certified Best Workplace

Excellence in Giving is excited to announce that we have been designated a Certified Best Workplace by the Best Workplaces Institute! The Best Workplace designation is given to companies that have a healthy workplace culture, as determined by an anonymous, voluntary survey of employees. 

As a Certified Best Workplace, we join hundreds of companies in the United States, Canada, and around the world as a workplace setting the standard as one of the best, most effective places to work in the world. We look forward to continuing to foster and develop our company culture in order to allow our clients to experience the joy of generosity to the fullest extent.