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

Ties That Bind: A Values-Driven Approach to Evolving Evaluative Practice

A growing number of new initiatives are seeking to transform philanthropic evaluation in ways that can better support them and the social change they are after. We represent three of these efforts.

By Meg Long, Julia Coffman, Jara Dean-Coffey, Clare Nolan

insight Oct 2019

Equitable Evaluation Applies to All Evaluation

It can be hard to understand how equitable evaluation applies to any evaluation, even for strategies that do not explicitly focus on advancing equity. Julia Coffman writes about her “aha” moment, when she realized that equitable evaluation should be at the center of all of her work.

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

presentation Jul 2019

How to Ask Powerful Questions [Webinar]

The kinds of questions we often pose — Did the intervention work? What are we learning about a particular issue? — may lead to information that is a useful input into learning, but they often don’t help us determine what to do next. This webinar shows us how to ask questions that, if answered, will make a difference in how we do our work.

By Tanya Beer

insight Jul 2019

Are you really ready for developmental evaluation? You may have to get out of your own way.

Developmental evaluation can create anxieties and disappointments for evaluation commissioners and evaluators who apply conventional evaluation routines to an evaluation endeavor that is fundamentally different.

By Tanya Beer

publication Jun 2019

When the Best Offense is a Good Defense: Understanding and Measuring Advocacy on the Defense

With advocacy, a “win” can mean avoiding a disadvantageous policy or holding the line on past wins. This brief covers how advocates conceptualize five different types of defense, and how to think about defense-specific outcomes, impact, and evaluation.

By Sarah Stachowiak, Joel Gutierrez

insight Jun 2019

It’s Time to Evaluate 501(c)(4) Activities

Advocacy evaluators need to reckon with evaluating 501(c)(4) tactics, otherwise we will find ourselves unable to speak meaningfully to the progress and setbacks our clients experience.

By Kat Athanasiades

event Jun 2019

Transitions and Transformations for Evaluation’s Role in Philanthropy

The 2019 Evaluation Roundtable convening explored how evaluation leaders—working within or with foundations—can manage change not just defensively, but proactively and productively.

publication Jun 2019

When Opportunity Knocks, Open the Door: Evaluation Amidst Transition at the Colorado Health Foundation

The Colorado Health Foundation experienced multiple organizational transitions in a short period of time, including two strategy redesigns, culture and values shifts, new expectations and assumption about roles and performance, and a new CEO. This teaching case invites reflection on the role of evaluation staff and consultants amidst the uncertainty and ambiguity of organizational change.

By Susan Parker

publication Jun 2019

Realigning Foundation Trustees to Incentivize Learning

A common barrier for the development of a foundation's learning culture is how staff and boards engage. The problem is that most of the routines in the board room are actually based on the mental model that social change is a technocratic problem-solving endeavor. There could be a lot of power in starting to change the routines and habits that hold that technocratic mental model in place.

By Tanya Beer