I mentioned in an earlier blog that evaluation could be fun but I am not sure that I convinced many of you on this. So here is a unique and funny perspective on “Output Outcome Downstream Impact Blues”, courtsey of the International Development Research Centre and Terry Smutylo. Who knew IDRC nurtured such creativity. It should be part of every new funder staff training. ‘Nuff said, this speaks (or sings) for itself …
Author Archive for Sheherazade Hirji
One good thing about being a “recovering” lawyer is that it I still access the latest trends and developments in the legal field. It’s part of our commitment to T-Shaped learning and it’s why Julie and I really enjoy working together, exploring and adapting ideas and trends from across all sectors.
This month’s issue of the Canadian Bar Association’s magazine “The National” has an article on a trend I have heard little about before, how law firms are using competitive intelligence to grow their business. CI helps determine a clients’ needs by researching and analyzing data on emerging industries, prospective clients and their market environments. This helps clients, but also helps the law firm figure out where to invest its own business development efforts. It also adds a financial lens on existing and potential clients with a view to understanding “who are the ones that are keeping the lights on.” The use of CI in this context is primarily to build business.
But it got me wondering how this function relates to the foundation and corporate philanthropy work we do. A few things jumped out: Continue reading ‘Five questions on your Competitive Intelligence’
I just finished reading Jeff Rubin’s new book, “Why Your World is About To Get a Whole Lot Smaller”. His message that the way we currently live in a global economy is not sustainable is not new to the grantmaking community. But it is a good reminder that we all need to revisit everything we take for granted from the bananas on our breakfast table to the weekend jet-away trips or visits to family in different corners of the planet.
His thesis that we will turn back to local from global got me wondering about what this means for grantmakers. I thought of at least three themes out of his analysis:
- Local communities will become a stronger anchor than ever before for ensuring there is a vibrant local economy that replaces the imported global economy we currently rely on. And local will need strengthened human connectivity as our ability to jet to far-away places to build community connections becomes more difficult and expensive. The quality of life in neighbourhoods will be a dominant factor in the more closely-knit communities we are going to experience. Funders who are working on neighbourhood development strategies are ahead of the coming curve as more and more of us come to realize the value of maintaining and building strong, vibrant and safe local communities. But it also raises the spectre of increasing neighbourhood striations related to income and class with the potential to increase protectionism and decrease broader integration and tolerance for diversity.
Continue reading ‘Philanthropy in a Brave New (but smaller) World’
We’ve been through some exciting times with evaluation in philanthropy over the past decade. A multitude of factors converged to both propel the imperative to evaluate and at the same time, to open up the space to look at evaluation in a different light. How thrilling it was (yes, there is thrill in evaluation!) when the limits of traditional evaluation thinking and methods to inform philanthropic efforts gave way to new definitions. Evaluation evolved to include the ability to generate learning and build capacity to improve, rather than just prove what was working and what was not. It invigorated evaluation with a whole new approach in enabling a balance of science and art in asking a broad constituency for input, understanding results, and interpreting them in an appropriate context.
Fast forward to now, and we see some dramatic changes in how we think about evaluation. We know that without strategic and effective organizations (whether the funder or an applicant/grant recipient), good intentions and programmatic efforts yield limited results. The work of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations and Centre for Effective Philanthropy focus on the organizational effectiveness of funders. Their efforts have helped funders strengthen their governance, their responsiveness, programs, and operations.
So given the dramatic growth of evaluation in philanthropy, what have we learned to help improve our knowledge and practice? Here are a few things we have learned:
Continue reading ‘Evaluation – three lessons about the things that really count’
