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.
Why is Evaluation So White?
In this presentation, Vidhya Shanker, PhD, and Carolina De La Rosa Mateo, MPH, explore how the field of evaluation has approached race, the implications of that approach, and the promise of generative networks to amplify the work of evaluators who identify as Indigenous, Black, or People of Color (IBPOC), as illustrated by one such network recently formed in Minnesota.
Performance Measurement for Emergent and Complex Strategies [Webinar]
Learn about four types of strategies—niche, integrated, emergent, and ecosystem—and the types of performance measurement and accountability systems best suited to each.
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.
Better, Faster, Results – Supporting Learning for Multiple Audiences
How can foundations build an approach that is connected to robust data and information and supports the many learning needs of multiple actors? This presentation for the 2017 Evaluation Roundtable convening is on strategies for supporting learning in philanthropy. It presents questions, challenges, and implications for foundation practice.
Evaluation and Learning for Aligned Action: 2014 Evaluation Roundtable Convening
This presentation provides the context for the 2014 Evaluation Roundtable convening, as well as discussion outlines, benchmarking data, case examples, and key lessons and implications for evaluation and learning.
Evaluation in Foundations: 2012 Benchmarking Data
This presentation, developed for the 2012 Evaluation Roundtable convening, examines how foundations structure their evaluation and learning functions, invest in evaluative activities, and use evaluative information. Findings are based on surveys from 31 foundations with a strong commitment to evaluation – and 38 foundations that participated in interviews.
Strategy Implementation Addressing the Disconnect between Decisions and Data: 2012 Evaluation Roundtable Convening
Drawing on benchmarking data gathered from the Evaluation Roundtable network, this presentation examines organizational barriers to learning from strategies, warns against cognitive traps that hinder learning and decision-making, and describes approaches to avoid or counteract those traps. It explores how the culture and role of evaluation in foundations can disconnect learning from strategy.
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.