Search Results

publication Sep 2023

Using Developmental Evaluation to Support Adaptive Strategies: An Application from a Social Change Initiative

The chapter, authored by and written from the perspective of both strategists and evaluators, describes the methods used, how the evaluation informed strategy, and reections and lessons on the developmental evaluation experience and approach.

By Tanya Beer, Kathy Armstrong, Julia Coffman, Daniel Stid

publication Aug 2023

Supporting Advocacy Ecosystems to Build Power

Organizers need the support of other actors—professional advocates, think tanks and policy shops, researchers, communications firms, funders, evaluators, and others—to recognize the critical role of organizing and to share the long-term goal of building people power.

By Julia Coffman

insight Apr 2023

What should we benchmark about learning and evaluation work in philanthropy?

Findings from our fall listening sessions and what we will explore more deeply in our benchmarking research.

By Dr. Albertina Lopez

insight Apr 2023

Gazing inward as we align with our values

CEI is shifting how we approach our benchmarking research on learning and evaluation in philanthropy so that it can better support the sector’s efforts to advance racial equity and justice.

By Dr. Albertina Lopez

publication Nov 2022

How to do Process Tracing: A Method for Testing “How Change Happened” in Complex and Dynamic Settings

Process tracing is a causal methodology that can help us to understand how change actually happened within a complex dynamic environment.

By Jennifer Byers, Jewlya Lynn, Sarah Stachowiak

publication Jul 2022

A Tool for Systems Change that Supports Learning in Foundations

Foundations are systems. They have their own cultures and related assumptions, norms, standards, and practices. We encourage foundations to take stock of their learning needs with a dispassionate (evaluative) look at themselves as systems and how people work within them.

By Tanya Beer, Julia Coffman, Jane Reisman

publication Mar 2022

Toward a Trust-Based Framework for Learning and Evaluation

What if we reimagined evaluation as an opportunity for funders to learn and evolve as stewards, rather than taking on the narrow–and virtually impossible–task of proving that limited grants make a measurable impact on longstanding, complex social issues?

By Shaady Salehi, Dr. Chera Reid

insight Feb 2022

How To Center Equity in Measurement, Learning, & Evaluation

NationSwell convened a panel of experts to talk about how organizations should think about equity when engaging with measurement, learning, and evaluation.

By Dr. Daniela Pineda, Dr. Amber Banks, Dr. Albertina Lopez, Brianna Provenzano

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, Dr. Albertina Lopez, Ben Liadsky, Andrew Taylor

event Mar 2021

What It Was, What It Is, Who We Are Becoming

The 2021 Evaluation Roundtable convening explored the first teaching case the Evaluation Roundtable ever explored: "Evaluation of the Fighting Back Initiative"