The Center for Practice-Based Evidence supports nonprofit agencies in conducting robust program evaluations in ways that are person-centered, outcome-oriented, and evidence-informed.

We are a dedicated team of evaluators, researchers, and data professionals commited to strengthening the capacity of nonprofits to generate evidence and translate it into greater impact.

Our approach to working with agencies is unique in a few ways:

We are an extension of your agency.

Since we are not vendors selling particular solutions, we have no vested interest other than seeing your impact grow.

Our technical consulting is designed to be revenue positive.

Our costs are usually offset by optimizing your tech stack and increasing efficiency with your data pipeline.

Partnership as flexible scaffolding.

We offer fully managed services; however, our goal is to support your team and identify the ideal partnership model for your agency.

Our founder and managing partner

Wesley Furlong, Ph.D., MSW, MA. is a social worker, data scientist, and adjunct professor at Baylor University. His work and research have focused on program evaluation methods within child welfare settings, with a particular focus on causal inference using observational data. He is also dedicated to advancing agency evaluation methods through the integration of continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) frameworks, making them more 'people-centered, outcome-oriented, and evidence-informed.'   

From 2021-2023, Wesley served as a research fellow at Baylor University, where he concentrated on the opportunities and challenges of building and implementing evidence-based practices in nonprofit agencies. Additionally, he is a Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer with extensive experience in designing and managing cloud data pipelines for analytics. 

Wesley and his wife Bonnie have been married 24 years, have three children (ages 18, 19, and 23) and have been long-time foster parents.