Welcome to Penny Cooper & Associates
Penny Cooper & Associates is a specialist evaluation and social research consultancy based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Established in 2007, we are active in the areas of health, education and human services. We provide services to not-for-profit, government and university clients, as well as to other evaluation and research consultancies.
Our mission for every project is to harness the power of evaluation and social research to ignite our clients’ thinking and fuel informed decision-making.
our services
Penny Cooper & Associates provides evaluation and research consultancy services to not-for-profit, government, university and health authority clients in the health and human services sectors, as well as to other evaluation and research consultancies.
Evaluation conceptualization & planning
Services include:
• Evaluation frameworks
• Needs clarification
• Logic modelling & program theory development
• Evaluation questions
• Indicator development
• Methodology development
• Data collection instruments
• Implementation planning
Evaluation implementation
Services include:
• Document reviews
• Administrative data reviews
• Literature reviews and environmental scans
• Interviews
• Focus groups
• Surveys
• Qualitative and quantitative analysis
• Reporting products
• Stakeholder management
Research & project support
Services include:
• Document reviews
• Administrative data reviews
• Literature reviews and environmental scans
• Trend research
• Facilitation (stakeholder consultations, interviews, focus groups)
• Quantitative and qualitative analysis
• Report-writing
Evaluation learning
Penny Cooper is a subject tutor in the Master of Evaluation Program at the University of Melbourne. Recently tutored subjects include Applied Research for Evaluation, and Impact Evaluation.
Please contact Penny to ask about support for evaluation learning, including:
* Organizational capacity-building
* Undergraduate level teaching
* Graduate level teaching
Valued clients
British Columbia (BC) Ministry of Mental Health & Addictions
BC Parks & Recreation Association
Canadian Drug Policy Coalition
Doctors of BC
Genome BC
Island Health
Health Employers Association of BC
Kwantlen College
Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research
Simon Fraser University
University of British Columbia
University of Melbourne
WISH
Yukon Government Fish & Wildlife Branch
about penny & the team
Our goal for every project is to build a dynamic team that brings together the right expertise at the right time. We work with a flexible team of Associates in Canada and Australia.
Penny Cooper - Principal, MEval, Credentialed Evaluator - combines over twenty years’ experience in evaluation and applied research with formal qualifications as a Master of Evaluation (University of Melbourne) and Credentialed Evaluator. Penny brings a broad perspective to the business, having worked in a range of evaluation and research settings, including not-for-profit, university and the private sector, as both an internal evaluator and external consultant. Past clients have included not-for-profit organizations, government and private sector businesses ranging from one-person consultancies to multinationals.
Penny’s evaluation and research experience spans a wide range of sectors and service areas in both Canada and Australia, with a particular focus in health. She is the former Director of Evaluation & Impact Analysis for the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, where she led a team to develop and implement the organization’s first comprehensive organizational evaluation framework. In this role, she also led or co-led a number of national initiatives in measurement of health research impact. Specialty areas include evaluation of health research, medical education, health promotion, and services for people with disabilities, mental health and addictions issues and seniors.
Penny is known by clients and colleagues for her insights and critical thinking that enable strategic dialogues to progress towards concrete ends; in particular, her ability to ask the right questions at the right time, transform fuzzy ideas into practical next steps through exceptional facilitation, analysis and writing, and drive better-informed organizational decision-making.
As a former Olympic athlete (field hockey, Seoul 1988, 6th place), Penny knows the value of commitment to excellence, teamwork, open communication and plain old hard work, and brings this approach into every job, large or small.