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LILY ZANDNIAPOUR: Hello, my name is Lily Zandniapour and 

I’m a research and evaluation manager at the AmeriCorps 

Office of Research and Evaluation, or ORE for short. I 

want to thank you for your interest in this webinar 

that is focused on return on investment studies 

commissioned by our office. 

Before delving into the topic, I want to provide you 

with a little bit of an introduction and background. 

First, can we tell you a little bit about the Office of 

Research and Evaluation at AmeriCorps? This office is 

dedicated to the development and dissemination of 

research and evaluation evidence. 

ORE uses evidence to inform decision making and to 

support and strengthen the agency’s work, programs, 

policies and investments. The office strives to create 

opportunities for innovation, improvement and increased 

impact. All of this is done with the intention to 

better position the agency, achieve its mission, which 

is to improve lives, strengthen communities and foster 

civic engagement to service and volunteering. 
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We accomplish this goal in partnership with our program 

officers in the agency and with our grantee partners 

across the country that implement solutions to local 

challenges and issues faced within the diverse 

communities in which they operate. 

As you may know, evaluative measurement and testing are 

best tied to a program’s development stage. From 

testing of a program’s design to how it works or can 

work better, to whether or not it brings about changes 

it aims to produce. Measurement and testing are always 

geared to answering specific questions about a social 

intervention and they vary based on a program’s life 

cycle and its base of evidence. 

One thing I want to emphasize is that AmeriCorps 

supports programs and solutions that are at different 

stages of development and have different types of 

evidence. So in a way, they are at different points 

along the evidence continuum. One of the important ways 

in which a program’s evidence base can be assessed in 

advance is through measurement that focuses on program 

cost and benefits. 
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An outcome or impact evaluation may assess whether the 

program leads to desirable outcomes and the extent to 

which they have impact. But these evaluations do not 

always look at the cost and benefit implications or to 

the value of these investments. Cost and benefit 

questions are usually the types of questions that are 

raised for interventions that are relatively mature, 

and their outcomes and impacts, or benefits, have been 

rigorously tested and captured through program 

evaluations using sound social science methodologies. 

These programs are then ripe for assessment of their 

cost effectiveness relative to the social benefits they 

generate. 

Starting a few years ago, and as the agency and our 

grantees increased our collective investments in 

building evidence for programs and generated evidence, 

we started focusing more on questions related to costs 

and benefits. The office commissioned some pilot 

studies and feasibility assessments in this area. We 

wanted to address questions such as the ones you see on 

this slide. Are there short term or intermediate term 
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outcomes from the programs or program models that can 

be measured and attributed to the program? These 

outcomes may be for children, families, communities, 

for national service members and volunteers, or for 

organizations and agencies. 

Other questions of interest are, whether or not 

outcomes can be monetized to calculate a financial 

return or can the costs of the program for participant 

or otherwise be estimated? Can we estimate the return 

on investment for the programs we implement or support? 

Return on investment, or ROI, is a performance measure 

for evaluating the effectiveness on investment, 

providing an additional lens to an outcome or impact 

evaluation. As I mentioned earlier, it gives the sense 

of a program’s value relative to its costs. 

What our office wanted to do by conducting ROI analysis 

was to develop and advance our evidence footprint in 

this area. We partnered with ICF and its team of 

experts to answer some of the questions we had on this 

topic and we are delighted that they are going to share 
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their findings on some of the work they have conducted 

in this area to-date. 

Our hope is to continue this work in the coming months 

and years to advance our body of evidence in this area. 

And we hope that you stay informed about this work as 

we sponsor more studies using a variety of approaches 

and methodologies, and do more to increase the 

readiness of our programs and the interventions that 

our partners implement, to do more on this front. 

In the meantime, there are different ways you can stay 

tuned and abreast of what we do. Please check our 

website, email us, sign up for our newsletter and 

future webinars and convenings. So without further ado, 

I will pass this on to our partners from ICF to explain 

and share their analysis and findings with you. Dr. 

Janet Pershing is going to kick us off. Thank you. 

JANET PERSHING: Hi, I’m Janet Pershing and I’m part of the 

ICF team that’s had the privilege of working with the 

AmeriCorps Office of Research and Evaluation over the 

past year on a series of return on investment studies. 

I’m really pleased to be able to be here to share some 
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insights with you about return on investment studies. 

I’d like to do four things with you here. 

First, we’re going to define Return on Investment, or 

ROI and take a quick look at some ROI research that’s 

been done on national service programs. Then we’re 

going to go through an ROI case study and really take a 

look at what an ROI is able to tell us. After that 

we’re going to look at some of the steps that go into 

building the foundation for an ROI study. And then 

finally we’re going to talk a little bit about the 

importance of building and identifying ROI-ready 

programs. 

What I hope is that this information is going to help 

you effectively take part in building the evidence base 

for the programs that you support or deliver. So, let’s 

start by defining Return on Investment and taking a 

look at ROI research on national service programs. 

Okay, so, what is ROI? It’s pretty simple, really. It’s 

the amount of benefit generated for each unit of cost. 

An ROI estimate tells you what the payoff is for each 
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dollar of investment. You can think of ROI as bang for 

the buck. To estimate the Return on Investment, 

researchers identify the benefits, identify the costs, 

and do the math. If you think about it, thought, 

sometimes it can be tricky. Those benefits especially 

can be really hard to quantify and sometimes it’s hard 

to figure out what the costs are when there are 

multiple funding streams or in-kind contributions. 

So, ROI researchers spend a lot of time finding ways to 

put monetary value on intangible benefits and really 

capture all of the costs associated with a program. 

That lets them plug the numbers into a formula like 

this to come up with an ROI. 

One of the important things about ROI estimates is that 

they make comparisons possible. An ROI for one program 

can be compared to the ROI for another program. That 

consistent comparison works if the programs are 

similar; but it also works if they do very different 

things. That ability to make comparisons allows us to 

inform policy decisions and investment decisions. So 

the more this community understands what it takes to 
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create strong ROI studies, the better equipped 

AmeriCorps will be to be able to use those studies, 

build a strong series of ROI estimates, and support 

good policy and investment decisions. 

Now, not every program is ready for ROI analysis. ROIs 

require an understanding of a program’s outcomes, and 

you need prior research that allows you to really 

monetize those results. So for example, you can show 

that a program’s improved kids’ educational 

performance; but unless you have prior studies that 

link that kind of improvement to something like 

lifetime earnings, there’s really no way to say how 

much that educational improvement is worth in dollars. 

So the ROI really depends on being able to monetize 

costs and benefits in order for that formula to do 

those cross-program comparisons. 

You may be familiar with some ROI research that’s 

already been done to look at the ROI of national 

service across multiple programs. Three quick examples 

on your screen. The first one is a 2013 study from 

Columbia University. That one looked at all youth and 
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senior based national service in the U.S. The second 

one, a 2020 study that ICF did, that looked at the 

combined return for a collection of more than two dozen 

AmeriCorps programs. And in addition, AmeriCorps has 

begun an initiative, called the ROI Studies Initiative, 

to really look at a series of programs that rely on 

national service, and estimate the ROI. 

We’re going to use some of the work of that ROI 

initiative to talk more about how ROIs work and what 

they can tell us. In 2020 that AmeriCorps ROI Studies 

Initiative produced four separate ROI studies for four 

very different programs. You can see their icons here, 

the AmeriCorps Seniors Foster Grandparent Parent 

Program, and Senior Companion Program; the Community 

Technology Empowerment Program, known by its acronym 

CTEP; the Minnesota Reading Corps; and College 

Possible. 

Those four reports look at ROI results for programs in 

a range of program areas including early education, 

workforce development, college access, and Senior Corps 

Programs. One tenet of the ROI Studies Initiatives is 
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taking a conservative approach to decide what’s to 

count or not count when assessing costs and benefits. 

That means that we only include benefits when the 

research can really back them up solidly. We do that 

even when intuition or common sense is suggesting that 

there really must be other benefits. We always stick 

with that fully-defensible approach that’s supported by 

rigorous research and evaluation. 

We’ll talk more about this later, but for some studies, 

existing research establishes benefits but not how long 

those benefits last. So, for example, we don’t know how 

long some education or workforce interventions 

increased earnings for. To deal with that kind of 

uncertainty, the studies estimated ROI using some 

short, medium, and long-term scenarios - one year, 

fifteen years, thirty years. And that range of options 

to understand possible benefits is something that we 

will look at in more detail in a little bit. 

The important thing for right now to know about these 

four studies is that for every one of the programs that 

we’ve looked at, and in every one of the scenarios, 
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short, medium, and long-term, the benefits that we 

found were positive. The magnitude ranged, but all of 

them had positive results. 

So let’s take a look at a case study to really 

understand how this ROI concept can be applied. The 

Community Technology Empowerment Program was 

implemented by the St. Paul Neighborhood Network. It 

was a program that looks at addressing the digital 

divide in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro area and it 

relies on service from AmeriCorps members to do things 

like teaching classes, providing one-on-one mentoring 

and training in computer and technology labs, and 

certifying participants in their technology skills. 

There’s been an evaluation done to assess the 

effectiveness of the CTEP program. In 2018 we found 

that those folks who participated in the program 

reported that of those who were unemployed before 

starting CTEP, 10.3 percent became employed afterward 

and reported that CTEP had helped them become employed. 

And the average annualized earnings for the CTEP 

programs who were unemployed and became employed, was 
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almost $31,000 dollars. So, we know how many more 

people attributed their employment after participation 

to the program, and we know how much those folks 

earned. 

So those are some pretty clear benefits. But it turns 

out that the CTEP participants were not the only ones 

to see those benefits. A CTEP study that we did looked 

at benefits for two additional stakeholder groups. So, 

we know that the CTEP program participants had 

increased earnings that could be attributed to the 

program, but AmeriCorps members that supported CTEP 

operations, and those members benefited from their 

involvement too. 

AmeriCorps members benefited in the form of stipends 

and living allowances that they received during their 

service. They got education awards following their 

service. And there’s also research showing that 

involvement in AmeriCorps boosts members’ earnings 

post-service. And then the third type of beneficiary 

were governments at the state, federal, and local 

level. They all benefited from CTEPs due to increased 
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earnings for the participants and the members in 

varying ways. 

The federal government, for example, received Social 

Security and Medicare and income tax revenue from the 

increased earnings of the CTEP participants and 

members. State and local governments benefited from 

sales tax revenue from increased spending from those 

earnings. And we also know that increased educational 

attainment is associated with reduced spending on 

government costs like corrections, public assistance, 

social insurance programs. So increased education 

associated with CTEP can also help reduce those costs 

to the government. 

Now, we’re going to look at a chart here with a lot of 

information packed into it. We’re going to take a 

minute here to break it down and interpret. We’ve seen 

already that the CTEP program had positive effects on 

the earnings of both the program participants and the 

AmeriCorps members. But what that research didn’t 

establish, as I mentioned earlier, is the duration of 

that impact. 
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We know there were positive earnings effects, but we 

don’t know how long they lasted. It’s possible that 

they endure for a long time; it’s possible that they 

also fade. For that reason we estimated Return on 

Investment using three different scenarios and in the 

top red area of this chart you can see those three 

areas. 

The short-term scenario assumed that the positive 

effects lasted for one year, medium-term assumed they 

lasted for fifteen years and long-term assumed that 

they lasted for thirty years. So each column assumes a 

different duration of those benefits. We also 

calculated the ROI, not across only the timeframes, but 

across different stakeholder groups. 

So, the row titles down the left-hand side give three 

different ways to think about benefits to stakeholders. 

In the first row we’re talking about the total benefits 

for all stakeholders: program participants, AmeriCorps 

members, and governments. And we’re looking at those 

total benefits for all stakeholders per federal dollar. 
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In the second row, it changes a little bit. We’re 

looking still at the total benefits for all 

stakeholders, but we’re looking per funder-dollar 

because federal dollars can be combined and leveraged, 

additional dollars, additional contributions. So the 

second row looks at the benefits for all funders. And 

in the last row we look at only benefits to the federal 

government. So, no benefits to anybody else considered 

- benefits to the federal government per federal dollar 

invested. 

So you can really see how the federal government 

benefits from its own investment of federal funds. So, 

you’ve got timeframes across the top and stakeholders 

and funders down the side. So with that orientation, 

let’s look at those ROI estimates for CTEP, and just 

make sure they know how to read those. We’re going to 

focus, for simplicity’s, sake on medium term, so the 

middle column assuming that the benefits fade after 15 

years. 
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So, the first row, total benefits per federal dollar, 

is showing us that this program generates $33.35 in 

benefits across all of the various stakeholders for 

every dollar invested. The second row, again in the 

medium term column, is showing us that the total 

benefits to all stakeholders is $21.48 per funderdollar, when you take into account not only federal but 

all funder investment. 

And finally in the last row, we see the federal 

government benefit per federal dollar. Again, in the 

medium-term, every dollar that the federal government 

invests yields $7.39 in benefits to the federal 

government. This slide gives one other view into the 

results that we just looked at. Just want to make sure 

that we all understand how to interpret the results 

that we’re seeing on that last slide, again, focusing 

on the medium-term. 

And you can see here that that right-hand column puts 

those findings from the ROI study into words. And what 

we see is that the total benefits per federal dollar, 

the ROI analysis estimated that every dollar of federal 
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government investment generates $33.35. On the second 

line, we can see the total benefits per funder, and 

here you see some of the specifics. It can be federal, 

state and local governments, foundations and 

philanthropies, private donors, community 

organizations, all the different contributions. 

When you take all of that into account, the ROI 

analysis estimated that every dollar of funder 

investment generates $21.48 in benefits. And again, in 

the last line you can see that federal government 

benefits per federal dollar, we’re talking about the 

analysis estimating that every dollar’s investment by 

the federal government generates $7.39 in benefits to 

the federal government alone. 

So with that understanding of what an ROI is, let’s 

back up. Let’s take a look now at the steps involved in 

estimating a Return on Investment. The steps include a 

five step process, which you can see on the screen 

here. The first step is developing a logic model. 
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And we’re going to take a look at a logic model on the 

next slide to help us think about identifying outcomes, 

costs and benefits and to think about the metrics that 

are going to be available to measure them. Step two is 

developing a feasibility study to figure out can we 

actually do an ROI on this program. Step three is 

compiling existing data and collecting new data. Step 

four, you have to estimate and monetize the benefits 

and the costs. And finally, you do that ROI 

calculation. It’s logical, it’s straightforward, but 

the devil is, of course, in the detail of how to get 

that done. 

So we’re going to walk through each of those steps. 

This is an example of a logic model for CTEP. You can 

see how the program’s inputs and costs and activities 

lead to short-term and longer term outcomes and 

ultimately benefits. You’ll see that the bolded text in 

this logic model is showing how those costs, 

activities, benefits, relate to particular stakeholder 

groups that are in the bolded font - so AmeriCorps 

members, program participants, public sector and so on. 
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The logic model flows from left to right and it shows 

how those inputs and costs make the activities 

possible. Those activities generate short and long-term 

outcomes and ultimately those outcomes results in 

benefits to various stakeholders. 

For the ROI analysis, what we’re going to be doing is 

measuring the costs on the far left and expressing them 

in dollars, which they usually are, and then measuring 

the benefits on the far right. Those also need to be 

expressed in dollars. For some benefits, like increased 

earnings, converting it to dollars is pretty 

straightforward. If the lifetime earnings over 15 to 30 

years is known, you need to discount to the value of 

money over time, but it’s a fairly straightforward 

calculation. 

For other types of benefits, it is much more 

challenging. Think about something like improved 

health, which is a benefit that some of the AmeriCorps 

supported programs support. Improved health is 

certainly a benefit, but how do you monetize that? 
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Well, it turns out that economists and researchers have 

spent lots of energy figuring out how you can monetize 

lots of these kinds of intangibles. And in many cases, 

there is appropriate, rigorous research to show you how 

to monetize the kinds of benefits that we want to 

measure. 

All right, so you’ve got your logic model. Figured out 

what those costs are, what those benefits are. Can you 

actually do this analysis? Step two is to do a 

feasibility study to figure that out. Because as we 

just discussed, sometimes getting the information you 

need to do it rigorously is not straightforward. 

So before you really dig in to do the work of an ROI 

study, researchers conduct a feasibility study to 

confirm that the information is available to allow you 

to actually estimate the ROI. And that process usually 

includes developing an analysis plan, figuring out what 

data is needed and getting that information. 

This step checks whether the ROI study is feasible 

before you actually invest a lot of time or other 
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resources. Step three is compiling and collecting the 

data. Once you’ve decided it’s feasible, you can launch 

right into compiling data that already exists, 

collecting any additional data that you might need. 

This step can include data that you have on hand based 

on the operations of the program, or maybe data from 

past evaluations that have been done. Sometimes you 

have to figure out how you’re going to go and collect 

additional data. And often we try to use public 

datasets. 

So, for example, looking at what are the publicly 

available tax rates to understand what benefits are to 

various levels of government. Throughout all of that 

compiling and collecting of data, of course, we always 

need to make sure that we are continuing to respect 

participant privacy. 

So any time we’re looking at data that comes from the 

program, we always make sure that we’re being 

respectful of the privacy requirements. Step four is 

estimating and monetizing those benefits and costs. The 
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data for an ROI study is almost always going to need to 

leverage rigorous research that’s going to connect 

those outcomes that you’re able to measure in the 

program to estimates in the value of those outcomes. So 

the ROI analysis needs to do that and careful controls 

for the changing value of the dollar over time when 

you’re looking at that longer-term benefit. 

Finally, step five is actually calculating the ROI. So 

the all-in ROI calculation includes all of the benefits 

and costs that you’ve looked at. But as we’ve seen, the 

ROI analyses can also explore ROI calculations that are 

restricted to a particular group of stakeholders or to 

a particular funding source. And your ROI analysis 

gives you different answers depending on what questions 

you’re asking and what the audience you’re speaking to 

cares about the most. 

This slide is showing a sample ROI calculation for 

total benefits for all beneficiaries per federal 

dollar. Those benefits, those beneficiaries include 

participants, AmeriCorps members, and government at all 

levels. And you can see that in the numerator at the 
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formula at the bottom of the slide. The amount of 

federal funding, since this is benefits per federal 

dollar, federal funding, is the denominator. 

So you can see it’s not a complicated formula, but you 

have to be very careful about what you put in your 

numerator and denominator to make sure you’re answering 

the question you want to be answering. The real key 

here, whatever question you want to answer, whichever 

groups of stakeholders or funding sources you want to 

pay attention to, is to be really clear about exactly 

what goes into that formula. 

And that’s it, really. It’s five easy steps. It is 

conceptually straightforward, but there is a whole lot 

of data in those details, of course. Time to move on, 

then, to talking for a minute about finding ROI-ready 

programs. We talked about the feasibility in step two 

of the process we just walked through. 

Not all programs have high quality outcomes data and 

there’s not always a way to monetize intangible 

benefits. So we need to really think about how we find 
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or build ROI programs in order to really be able to 

increase our evidence base. Let’s take a minute to 

think about how you can help find or build ROI-ready 

programs. One is to really help build evidence of 

impact of national service. That can happen through 

supporting rigorous evaluation that measure near-term, 

medium-term, long-term outcomes and to really be sure 

we’re carefully capturing program costs. 

Think about the programs that you work with, the ways 

that evaluation and research could be improved and 

supported to be ready for ROI analysis in the coming 

months or years. The second thing you can do is to 

suggest programs that may be ROI-ready to the 

AmeriCorps Office of Research and Evaluation to let 

them know that we have a promising program for an ROI. 

Try letting them know that and getting it into the 

queue for an ROI analysis. 

Really, I think the take-away here is that AmeriCorps 

has been working for years to increase the evidence 

base and really understand which national service 

programs work in an effort to target those national 
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service efforts most effectively. ROI studies are 

another component of that evidence base, really helping 

demonstrate which national service programs provide the 

most bang for the buck. 

But as you’ve seen, a lot goes into an ROI study and 

you need to have building blocks before we can do one. 

We need to have evidence about the results. We need to 

have ways to monetize the results. A way to assess 

resources that go into running a program, including 

contributions from various funding streams and the 

value of in-kind contributions are also really 

essential. So not every program is ready for an ROI, 

but those of you who work with programs that rely on 

national service, you can actively support efforts to 

get them ROI-ready and build this evidence base. 

If you’ve got questions about what’s going on with the 

ROI initiative at AmeriCorps, you can reach out to Lily 

Zandniapour. You can see her email contact information 

on the screen here. Lily is always interested in what 

folks have to offer and would be delighted to work with 

any of you if you have an ROI opportunity in one of the 
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programs that you work with. So thank you very much for 

participating in the discussion here, and good luck 

with upcoming ROIs. 

LILY ZANDNIAPOUR: I want to thank Dr. Janet Pershing from 

ICF for this presentation. We hope this was informative 

for you. As I mentioned at the beginning of this 

webinar, please stay informed and abreast of all we do 

and stay tuned for more in this area. Please check our 

website, email us or sign up for our newsletter and 

future webinars and convenings. Thanks again for 

joining us today. 

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