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Rebuild Collaborative

The City of Philadelphia

From 2019 to 2024, MAI served as the local evaluator for the JPMorgan Chase AdvancingCities Initiative, supporting the Rebuild Collaborative. In this capacity, MAI gathered and reported on implementation and outcomes data, which directly informed Rebuild’s strategic pivots and grounded efforts in program participant voice. MAI also collaboratively built and refined Rebuild’s comprehensive evaluation framework, co-developing and pilot-testing tools to capture a 360-degree view of their efforts, including community perceptions of inclusion and site effectiveness. Our multi-faceted work has helped Rebuild track, learn from, and showcase its impact over time, beginning with foundational evaluation work and building into comprehensive program evaluation and ongoing consultancy.

Our initial engagement with Rebuild focused on establishing a strong foundation for learning.

  • The Work: We collaborated with the City of Philadelphia’s Rebuild office to design an Evaluation Framework and related data collection tools. This framework was directly aligned with the Theory of Change developed with the William Penn Foundation, ensuring that data collection efforts would capture Rebuild’s intended outcomes.
  • Key Insight: This project established that Rebuild, as a complex city initiative tracking data at many levels, would significantly benefit from sharing its evaluation learnings more broadly with the public to garner initiative support and buy-in.

Running in parallel, we served as the local evaluator for The Rebuild Collaborative, a high-impact partnership between Rebuild, Philadelphia Works, and PIDC, funded by a $5 million JPMorgan Chase AdvancingCities challenge grant. This initiative links Rebuild’s capital investments in public spaces to equitable opportunity access in construction and affiliated industries.

  • The Work: Over the grant period, MAI collected, managed, analyzed, and shared findings associated with Rebuild’s workforce development (WFD) programs and small business programs (Rebuild Ready, Emerging Vendors Program, and Rebuild Contract Line of Credit).
  • Key Insight: Our evaluation revealed that while achieving external systems change remains challenging, collaboratives like this can make significant in-roads by communicating regularly, maintaining focus on key objectives, and continually refining program efforts based on participant perspectives.

Building directly on the foundational Evaluation Framework, our role as the Rebuild Evaluation Consultancy provided continuous, hands-on support.

  • The Work: MAI supported Rebuild to collect, manage, analyze, and report on data related to their priority outcomes from the established evaluation framework. Our work included 50 site visits at pre-improvement and post-improvement sites, leading four community-level focus groups, and supporting community engagement event surveying at site ribbon cuttings, with the support of our partners, Let’s Go Outdoors and ImpactED.
  • The Impact: This consultancy ensured that Rebuild was continually learning, making data-informed decisions, and utilizing the robust evaluation tools developed in the initial phase to track progress toward its mission of improving community facilities and promoting economic inclusion.

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Don Haworth

Administrative Coordinator

Don Haworth is MAI’s Administrative Coordinator, supporting grants management, accounting, and office operations. Prior to joining MAI, Don worked for Prince George’s County, Maryland, for over twenty years as a firefighter/paramedic, and served in the U.S. Air Force. Don has a long history of volunteer community service, including serving as a volunteer with Boy Scouts of America, participating in and leading several community groups, and was a volunteer firefighter. When he is not working at MAI, Don teaches martial arts and skiing/snowboarding.

Sarah Pepper

Statistical Consultant

Sarah Pepper serves as a Statistical Consultant with MAI. Over the past 25 years, she has worked with a wide range of non-profit organizations and foundations to facilitate the design of data collection and analysis approaches and to help organizations strategize around manageable ways to monitor their fidelity to intended implementation efforts and anticipated outcomes.

She enjoys the experience of continually learning from each organization with which she has the pleasure to work. Sarah is grateful for the opportunity to jointly create evaluation tools and processes that are mutually beneficial to participants and practitioners.

Prior to working with MAI, Sarah worked with Public/Private Ventures as a Research Associate. She earned a Ph.D. in Demography and Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Sarah lives outside of Philadelphia where she enjoys officiating track meets, making new vegetarian recipes, and keeping up with the adventures of her adult children.

Sara Greenfield

Research Associate

Sara Greenfield is a Research Associate at MAI. In her capacity as a Project Manager, Sara has led and overseen numerous diverse projects at MAI. Her experience extends across a spectrum of sectors, including social, health, education, and environmental justice. Sara also brings valuable experience in evaluating learning networks and communities of practice.

Sara is a mixed-methods researcher and is committed to applying a racial equity lens and cultural humility to all of her evaluation work. She is dedicated to gathering nuanced, systematic information about program implementation, constituent voices and experiences, programmatic outcomes, and areas of opportunity. Sara’s passion infuses depth and inclusivity into her evaluation work, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of diverse perspectives and advancing equity within her projects.

Sara, a first-generation Latina college graduate, earned her B.A. in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience from Temple University.

Sara, her husband Cliff, and two kiddos enjoy exploring outside, cooking and baking together, reading, and doing puzzles!

Wendy McClanahan

President/CEO

Wendy McClanahan is McClanahan Associate’s (MAI) President/CEO. Wendy uses her research and evaluation expertise to help programs, initiatives, and organizations maximize their impact, improve their practice, and fuel systemic change. Her approach centers the expertise and assets of the organizations she works with and the people they serve.

Over her career, Wendy has led studies of out-of-school time and mentoring programs, violence and crime reduction programs, health equity initiatives, and employment and training programs. She also works with organizations to help them grow their evaluation and learning capacity.

Prior to forming MAI, Wendy was senior vice president for research and evaluation at Public/Private Ventures. She has a PhD in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania and a MS in Human Development from Penn State. 

Wendy lives in the Philadelphia area and enjoys hanging out with her family and friends, playing games, and doing things that get her outside, like skiing and (leisurely) swimming (also known as “floating”).

“My approach to equitable research and evaluation is deeply informed by both my professional expertise and my personal experiences.

Growing up in a family with diverse socioeconomic and cultural roots and later raising a multiracial family has cultivated a profound understanding of varied pathways and the systemic forces that shape opportunity.

This lived experience, which includes navigating the collateral impact of the justice system on families, strengthens my commitment to research that not only rigorously analyzes data but also authentically centers lived experiences and drives actionable change for youth and families.” – Wendy McClanahan