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 …
Archive for the 'Evaluation' Category
I was on my way to meet Sheherazade for a meeting with a client yesterday and thinking about how to frame my section of our interim report when I thought of Frank Gehry. A few years ago I went to an exhibit at the Guggenheim that featured his work and what fascinated me at the time was that his creative process did not start with the building, but with understanding the space and flow of the project. His early stage drawings, starting with squiggles on a cocktail napkin or random pieces of paper, were about the energy and nature of the space itself; and even after he started to design the structure, his spacial thinking would run parallel, merging finally with the design. What made me think of this is because, in our small way, that is how Sheherazade and I approach our work. Long before we produce the ultimate product we spend considerable time understanding the nature of what we are working with, what ‘flow’ looks like, what ideas underpin the project, and what matters to the people involved. In this case, the task is to build an evaluation framework for the funders of a national scale-up of a successful local project. So one of the questions we’ve been asking ourselves as we mull around in the project’s ’space’ is, what is scale-up? Is it replication? Is it a community of practice? Is it social innovation? Is there a difference between those? Does that matter? We reviewed the literature, we talked to stakeholders, and we realized that yes, those are very different concepts, and yes, it does matter. We ultimately settled on two models that capture the essential differences, one which we call replication and and the other (for lack of a better term) ‘knowledge transfer’. Continue reading ‘The Yin and Yang of Scaling-up’
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’
