Search Results

publication Nov 2021

We need to articulate our assumptions so that we can test them. Here’s a guide to help.

This four-page guidance defines assumptions, explains why it is critical to articulate them, and then offers a set of prompting questions to help elicit them. Examples are included.

By Tanya Beer, Julia Coffman

publication Aug 2021

Holding Foundations Accountable for Equity Commitments

Philanthropy needs to transform the structures and processes through which foundations hold power, including how they conceive of and operationalize accountability through their approaches to strategy development, evaluation, and grantee reporting and monitoring.

By Tanya Beer, Patti Patrizi, Julia Coffman

publication Apr 2021

Approaches to Learning Amid Crises: Reflections from Philanthropy

Explore how foundations’ approaches to learning shaped their responses to the crises of 2020. In interviews with seven foundations from Canada and the U.S. in the summer and fall of 2020, the authors applied the lens of organizational learning to how each of these foundations made sense of their reality, asked different kinds of questions to inform their thinking, and acted in new or different ways as a result.

By Tanya Beer, Julia Coffman, Ben Liadsky, Andrew Taylor, Albertina Lopez

publication Jan 2021

Co-creating our story: A hybrid participatory case approach to evaluating and accelerating organizational change

This brief describes an evaluative approach we took to an organizational change process at a foundation that could be useful to evaluators.

By Tanya Beer, Susan Parker, Kurian Thomas, Anne Cullen Puente

insight Aug 2020

Can Foundations Radically Transform How They Learn?

In 2020, we are seeing some fundamental shifts in how foundations are operating and attempting to learn. How might we use our experience right now to understand something new about the organizational and sector conditions that are necessary to make real and honest learning and adaptation possible and in service to equity?

By Tanya Beer, Julia Coffman, Jane Reisman, Ben Liadsky, Andrew Taylor

presentation Jul 2020

Re-Thinking How We Work with Boards on Evaluation and Learning

Most board room routines are based on the mental model that social change is a technocratic problem-solving endeavor. So we incentivize and reward staff who project a degree of certainty about how social change happens that's just not real because the change process is much more complex.

By Tanya Beer

publication Mar 2020

Smart Decision-Making

Even when evidence is available in the social sector, it is rarely used. A number of tools and tactics can help us become savvier consumers of information.

By Tanya Beer, Julia Coffman

presentation Feb 2020

Performance Measurement for Emergent and Complex Strategies [Webinar]

Learn about four types of strategies—niche, integrated, emergent, and ecosystem—and the types of performance measurement and accountability systems best suited to each.

publication Jan 2020

Benchmarking Foundation Evaluation Practices 2020

What does foundation evaluation look like today? Is it adapting to meet the changing needs of the sector and society?

By Tanya Beer, Mariah Brothe Gantz, Kat Athanasiades, Julia Coffman, Albertina Lopez

insight Oct 2019

How Leaders Affect Evaluation Capacity Building in Foundations

Regardless of intent, foundation leaders can substantially harm or strengthen evaluation capacity building in their organizations. We can add value if we know how and why.

By Albertina Lopez

insight Oct 2019

Funders are from Mars, Consultants are from Venus

If we want evaluation to add real value to social change efforts, both funders and evaluation consultants have to re-examine their roles and how they relate.

By Julia Coffman

insight Oct 2019

What Will it Take for Philanthropy to Learn?

Learning leaders from fourteen foundations participated in a year-long "Lab for Learning" to experiment with and test ideas for supporting learning in foundations. Several “ground truths” guided this work.

By Tanya Beer, Julia Coffman, Jane Reisman, Haley Millet, Aparna Rae