Study after study has demonstrated that postsecondary success involves a range of factors from neighborhood context to family history to individual aspiration (Kim & Rifelj, 2021). Kauffman Scholars Incorporated (KSI), a post-secondary scholarship program based in Kansas City, understands these factors and has tailored its programming accordingly. Throughout its 20-year history, KSI has focused on supporting low-income students in attaining postsecondary credentials. Whereas the program has changed over time, it has consistently offered college scholarships, academic tutoring, and mentoring to students starting in 7 grade. Over 800 Scholars have earned college degrees since KSI's inception. KSI's goals extend beyond participating individuals. They also aim to create a ripple effect--having impacts on people in Scholars' lives, community organizations, and the local career-professional pipeline. These goals are reflected in wrap-around services such as one-on-one coaches and community partners who guide KSI scholars and their families through barriers that often derail students from their postsecondary track. th NORC and Bowman Performance Consulting (the NORC team) have joined together to evaluate KSI's impact over the past two decades. The traditional linear cause-effect evaluation methodology is insufficient to fully understand and describe the complex nature of transformational change at this scale. Understanding system-wide impacts requires holistic thinking, innovative and flexible approaches, and a radical commitment to partnership with all stakeholders. Our research approach, which draws upon the Culturally Responsive Indigenous Framework and Equitable Evaluation, meets these criteria. We think of this as telling the story of the ripple effect of KSI over twenty years. We will examine impacts from the direct source (the Scholar), rippling out to their families, their other connections, and ultimately, to the broader community of Kansas City. In our evaluation study, we: (1) investigate to what extent KSI achieved its goals, (2) describe what factors enabled or constrained KSI scholars and alumni in achieving KSI goals, discuss what ways KSI impacted Kauffman Foundation strategies, investments, and current work, and (3) delineate the ways KSI Scholars and alumni have impacted the local community. This study is ongoing and will be completed by September 2023. This proposal describes our methodological approach and the purposeful ways we embed equity throughout the research process. We will be ready to present findings in the Fall. Data: Nobody understands a person's story better than the person who has lived it. As such, we purposefully embed participant-centered ideals that honor the tenets and conceptual framing for culturally responsive practices (Ladson-Billings, 2008; Bowman, 2018) with a focus on interpersonal, experiential, and consequential validity (Kirkhart, 2010) throughout our approach. The NORC team will conduct Storytelling interviews with 20 past and present Scholars. Each Scholar will identify a person in their lives to interview, gathering their story of KSI's impacts beyond the individual Scholars. We empower the Scholar in multiple ways throughout the process. First, we co-construct the Storytelling protocol with each Scholar, and practice the skill of interviewing another person, allowing their story to be told in their own words. Part of this practice will include participating in an interview (as the interviewee), where a member of the NORC team will interview the Scholar about their experiences with KSI. Second, we put Storytelling agency in the Scholars' hands, asking them to select a connection in their lives to interview, helping us understand the ripple effect of KSI across people. This approach employs Storytelling to build relationships across researchers, Scholars, and the community. It also grounds the evaluation work in the nuanced contextual elements that shaped KSI's impact over time, surfacing and infusing meaning throughout the data collection and analysis process. Our project also includes a survey of the 2,000+ current and former Scholars, a survey of household members of these Scholars, a survey of community organizations impacted by KSI, interviews with KSI staff, and secondary data collected by Kauffman on their Scholars over time. The Storytelling interviews are the heart of the study--they provide the story of KSI's impact from those who lived and continue to live through the experience. The other data contextualize the Storytelling data, providing important information about the demographic composition of the Scholars, programmatic goals and reasons for programmatic design decisions, and data on KSI's ripple effects on the community and Scholars' family units. Methods: Storytelling Analysis: The NORC Team will utilize a combination of inductive and deductive coding strategies to synthesize themes and describes KSI's range of impacts over time. We will utilize KSI's vision, mission, and value statements as normative guideposts through which to analyze the storytelling data (e.g., how do the values of the KSI program express themselves throughout KSI Scholar and Scholar connection stories?). All primary data collection tools include questions that mirror the Storytelling Interview questions. We will first examine responses to these questions, honing in on what parts of KSI were most impactful for Scholars as well as for the local community. We will create a cross-data matrix, comparing responses across participant type, surfacing themes of commonality and divergence. By analyzing data in this way, we gain the benefit of extra nuance and detail by drawing on Scholars' lived experiences, the experiences of chosen ones in their lives, the stories of the KSI staff who supported them, and information from the communities they live within. Landscape Analysis: Analyzing KSI's secondary data will provide a landscape of KSI's impact contextualize the stories we collect. We will also draw on the Scholars, family member, and community stakeholders survey data. The survey data allows us to identify specific program features that were associated with program satisfaction and other outcome measures. We will also compare across Scholar groups to hone in on how programmatic elements shaped Scholars' lives. Conclusion: Evaluation is, at its heart, telling the stories of people's lives in ways that are authentic, meaningful, and participant-centered. Our project employs an intentionally responsive evaluation design, centering participants while purposefully placing agency for telling their stories in their hands. We strongly believe that embedding equity and repositioning the roles of researchers, participants, and community in these ways deeply strengthen the research process from beginning to end.