Lauren and Angelika started Grantibly as a side hustle. Now it is Lauren's full-time job.

Never having a business class or a background in entrepreneurship, we didn't know where to start creating a business. We spent almost 2 years learning how to register a business, set up a website, get insurance, figure out how to get clients, how to work with them, how to collect payment and so much more!

There are so many free resources out there and so many people in the evaluation world willing to give their advice (which we are SO grateful for!) but putting it all together to set up our own business took a lot of effort. Now we want to demystify that process for you through our offerings!

As Lauren got more and more frustrated with her academic position, she decided she wanted to grow Grantibly so that it could be her full-time job. With Angelika (and her family's) support, that is exactly what she did! Leaving a tenured position is something that scares a lot of people, rightfully so, but what scared Lauren even more was spending her life in a career that no longer fulfilled her (and in fact frustrated her and impacted her mental health) and never being able to achieve the financial success she wanted no matter how hard she worked or how good she was at her job. Something had to change. Making the leap into full-time independent evaluation consulting has made her happier and healthier than ever before. The sky is the limit on her financial earning potential.

For Angelika, Grantibly is an invigorating endeavor that stretches her beyond her day-to-day position in academia. That is, Grantibly is a part-time role that she balances with her full-time job. She loves her job as a professor, but she wanted a new and exciting challenge doing something she enjoys to make an even bigger impact in the world while making additional income. Angelika brings a combination of her social science skills and experience in higher education as well as her creative and entrepreneurial talents to Grantibly, and it has been an exciting, fulfilling, impactful, lucrative, and confidence-building experience! 

Both Lauren and Angelika love being entrepreneurs, and have learned that the world of evaluation is a welcoming one, full of brilliant, talented and kind people whose passion for helping others is unparalleled. Evaluation is about applying social science skills to evaluate programs so that they can “do MORE good!” (Grantibly's tagline) by using data to tell the story of their program’s successes and opportunities to improve. In that way, being an evaluation consultant is another way for professors to bring the social sciences to life – it’s a great compliment to an academic career! 

Teaching and doing academic research are ways to change the world but there are so many other ways to do so - evaluation research is one of those ways. Working with organizations doing good work in the community on topics you care about and helping them "do MORE good" is important, meaningful work.

If you've ever thought about doing evaluation work, Lauren and Angelika have streamlined the process so you don't have to take 2 years, like we did, to get started. You can get started now! Whether you want a side hustle that fulfills you to make a little extra money or you want to be able to leave your academic career behind to run your own evaluation consulting business, we are here to help!

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