publication May 2021

How Far Dare an Evaluator Go Toward Saving the World? Redux, Update, and a Reflective Practice Facilitation Tool

This article offers raw qualitative data as a supplement to the 2021 article authored by Michael Quinn Patton and published in the American Journal of Evaluation titled: "How Far Dare an Evaluator Go Toward Saving the World? Redux, Update, and a Reflective Practice Facilitation Tool."

By Michael Quinn Patton

publication Apr 2021

Advocacy that Builds Power: Transforming Policies and Systems for Health and Racial Equity

While getting policy wins and systems changes is important, what does it mean to center impacted communities as the drivers of change? What does it mean to make building their power the ultimate goal of advocacy work? What does it require of the broader ecosystem of advocacy actors who also are involved in the work? CEI's evaluation report of The California Endowment's Building Healthy Communities initiative explores these questions and more.

By Julia Coffman, Gigi Barsoum, Albertina Lopez, Mariah Brothe Gantz

insight Apr 2021

CEI Announces Chera Reid as New Co-Executive Director

Chera, formerly Director of the Evaluation Roundtable within CEI, is a champion of philanthropic learning and evaluation, particularly in service to racial equity and justice. The new co-leadership structure aligns with the organization-wide shift toward using evaluation and learning to increase racial equity within the historically white-led field of philanthropy.

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

publication Mar 2021

Tools and Tips for Implementing Contribution Analysis

Get practical lessons on applying contribution analysis to advocacy impact evaluations, especially when dealing with time and resource constraints. Contribution analysis does not seek to "prove" the role of a particular actor or set of actors in bringing about change, but instead to develop a plausible, credible evidence-based narrative to answer causal questions about their influence.

By Laura Hopkins

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, Anne Cullen Puente, Kurian Thomas

event Dec 2020

American Evaluation Association (2020)

CEI staff presented at the virtual American Evaluation Association conference in October 2020.

insight Nov 2020

Q&A: Washington Evaluators in conversation with Dr. Chera Reid

This conversation originally took place during an event hosted by Washington Evaluator members on November 5th, 2020, and is cross-posted at https://washingtonevaluators.org.

By Emily Bango, Chera Reid

presentation Oct 2020

ACE Evaluation Network Webinar Series

Learn about the Advancing Culturally-responsive and Equitable (ACE) Evaluation Network

By London Losey, Karla Mendez

insight Aug 2020

Dr. Chera Reid is the New Leader of the Evaluation Roundtable

Chera takes over the Roundtable’s leadership at a pivotal time in its evolution. Going forward, the Evaluation Roundtable will focus on organizing participants to influence the philosophy and norms of practice in philanthropy so that evaluation and learning help to advance racial equity and justice.

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