Search Results

publication Nov 2010

Social Movements and Philanthropy: How Foundations Can Support Movement Building

Movement building presents unique challenges for foundations. Because movements, by definition, must be driven by the people who are most affected, foundations cannot pre-determine their goals and timetables. This Foundation Review article describes how to support and evaluate social movements, including outlining core elements to movement building and proposing an evaluative framework. 

publication Oct 2010

Measuring Change while Changing Measures: Learning in, and from, the Evaluation of Making Connections

Making Connections was an ambitious, multi-site, decade-long community change effort supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. It started in 1999 and aimed to improve outcomes for vulnerable children by transforming their neighborhoods. This teaching case focuses on the evaluation choices and challenges of this long-term comprehensive community change initiative.

publication Aug 2010

Champions and “Champion-ness”: Measuring Efforts to Create Champions for Policy Change

Creating “policy champions” who shepherd policy change is central to many advocacy efforts. But what exactly is a champion for policy change? How can we assess progress in identifying, informing, or activating them? This brief offers a tool for defining and tracking the activity of champions for policy change, along with the challenges involved in using it.

publication Aug 2010

Measuring Impact in Practice: A Case Study of The Humane Society of the United States

Just like all nonprofits, the Humane Society of the United States is accountable—to the animals it protects and to its donors. This brief describes how the nation’s largest animal protection organization developed an impact framework to capture its advocacy and direct service outcomes.

publication Aug 2010

Using a Social Justice Lens in Advocacy Evaluation

Social justice advocacy works for enduring changes that increase the power of those who are most disadvantaged politically, economically, and socially. This brief discusses how to incorporate the concept of social justice and its underlying values into advocacy evaluation.

presentation Jun 2010

Use of Evaluative Information in Foundations: 2009 Benchmarking Data

This presentation, developed for the Evaluation Roundtable, offers† benchmarking data on foundation practices regarding evaluation and learning and how evaluation resources are deployed. In the shift toward strategic philanthropy, at the time, foundations were challenged to re-frame evaluation from an older model of “post hoc” assessment to one that examined their own work from start to finish.

publication Mar 2010

Evaluating Community Organizing

Community organizing has gained visibility as a vibrant and potent force for social change. While it shares many characteristics with policy advocacy, it differs in significant ways and the approaches to evaluating the two also differ. This brief offers a vision for community organizing evaluation that is grounded in a set of principles based on direct experience with organizers. 

publication Oct 2009

Evaluating Advocacy and Policy Change: The Funder’s Perspective

Funders with experience in advocacy evaluation have found that getting buy-in from grantees and other funder staff can be challenging. This brief offers responses.

publication Oct 2009

Tools to Support Public Policy Grantmaking

This Foundation Review article offers guidance on how foundations can frame, focus, and advance efforts to achieve public policy reforms, outlines five essential steps for developing public policy strategy, and provides two tools to support foundations during the strategy development process.

By Julia Coffman

publication Jun 2009

Necessary And Not Sufficient: The State of Evaluation Use in Foundations

Based on a 2009 survey of evaluation leaders from foundations known for their commitment to evaluation, this study looked at whether foundations “walk the talk” by tracking the results of their work. It examined the practices related to use of evaluative information in 31 foundations.

publication May 2008

Death Is Certain. Strategy Isn’t.

For many in philanthropy, the word “strategy” has come to imply a de rigueur set of formal and sequential steps: research, analysis and development of a theory of change, and identification and tracking of outputs and outcomes. This teaching case about the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s work to improve end‐of‐life care in America is about an alternative approach to linear conceptions of strategy.

publication Oct 2006

Making Evaluation Matter

Does evaluation add value to philanthropy? This report offers insights from a 2006 Evaluation Roundtable convening. It looks at where evaluation was falling short in its role and an action agenda for how it can better help to improve foundation effectiveness.