Search Results

publication Jul 2011

Evaluation to Support Strategic Learning: Principles and Practices

Strategic learning refers to efforts to incorporate reliable data and ongoing reflection into social change strategies. This brief digs into the definition of strategic learning. It explores how evaluation can support it, and proposes a set of principles that represent the “non-negotiables” of evaluation for strategic learning. 

By Tanya Beer, Julia Coffman

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.

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 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 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 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. 

publication Jul 2006

Looking for Shadows: Evaluating Community Change in the Plain Talk Initiative

The 1990s marked the beginning of a shift by large national foundations from mainly programmatic investments to a deeper engagement in long-term, complex community change. This teaching case explores the evaluation of a large multi-city comprehensive community initiative, funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, that sought to make contraceptives available to sexually active youth to reduce pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases. 

publication Apr 2005

Evaluation of the Fighting Back Initiative

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation developed a multi-site initiative that used community-generated strategies to reduce the use and abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs. The Fighting Back initiative was in place for 12 years, with a total investment of $88 million. At the end, evaluators concluded that across the Fighting Back sites, the initiative did not produce significant reductions in use. This teaching case offers a complicated story about the many issues foundations face in evaluating their investments.

publication Jul 2004

The Devolution Initiative Evaluation: Innovation and Learning at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Federal welfare and health care reforms in the mid-1990s resulted in the “devolution” of powers, responsibilities, and funding from the federal to state and local levels of government. This teaching case focuses on the evaluation of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Devolution Initiative, a seven-year, $56 million project with 31 grantees and a $3.6 million external evaluation conducted by the Harvard Family Research Project.