Resources
- Publication
- |
Philanthropy has made systems change a fixture of its strategies, portfolios, and conferences, and yet the systems it seeks to influence keep behaving in remarkably durable ways. AI arrives at this moment as both an opportunity and a risk.
FILTER BY:
- Publication
What does foundation evaluation look like today? Is it adapting to meet the changing needs of the sector and society?
- Insight
It is possible to get more from evaluation, and it starts by challenging our own habits.
- Insight
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.
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.
- Insight
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.
- Insight
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.
- Insight
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.
- Presentation
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
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
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.
- Insight
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.
- Teaching Case
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.