Case Study: Native American Youth and Family Center achieves measurable, culturally-rooted outcomes and improved grant reporting with Bonterra Apricot

Native American Youth and Family Center - Customer Case Study

Native American Youth & Family Center (NAYA), a Portland-based organization serving Native youth and families, faced a new challenge when Oregon required that 75% of funds go to evidence-based programming. Although NAYA had decades of community success, those outcomes were largely anecdotal and funders increasingly demanded measurable, culturally relevant evidence of impact for the specific populations they serve.

NAYA partnered with NICWA and the RTC to use community-based participatory research to define Native-valued outcomes and built the NAYA Assessment Tool (NAT), later implemented in Efforts to Outcomes (ETO) software. The NAT guides case planning, aggregates individual data for evaluation, and strengthened grant reporting—early results include a high school graduation rate for NAYA youth five times that of Native students in Portland Public Schools and notable positive changes (67% in cultural resilience, 63% in depression, 59% in ethnic pride, 39% in community mindedness); the NAT is now being adapted for other tribal communities.

Native American Youth and Family Center

Travis Rice

Evaluation Program Specialist