Try This: Move Away from Funder-Driven Evaluation
Try this out and let me know how it goes for you.
I was a panelist on a recent webinar, discussing community and structural interventions to support maternal health equity.
During the conversation, I shared an evaluation struggle:
Evaluation is used to meet funder expectations, instead of serving as a learning tool for organizations.
A few years ago, I worked with an organization that received funding to build their evaluation capacity.
It was fun because I felt like a professor, creating an easy to understand curriculum on evaluation. Also, the staff who self-selected into this process were tasked with training departmental staff in building their evaluation capacity.
Unfortunately, organizations aren’t oriented to see evaluation in this way. Program evaluation is viewed as a means to an end, a funder request to confirm that funding was spent as intended. They’re asked to conduct “rigorous” evaluations on “evidence-based” programs, without any conversation on what rigor and evidence-based actually mean to an organization.
Before an evaluation begins, I recommend working with programming staff to clarify the program’s purpose AND what program success looks like for staff. Then, you use this to create an evaluation process that balances staff priorities and funder expectations.
This activity is ideal for:
- Anyone responsible for leading data collection and sense making processes
- Anyone interested in applying evaluative thinking into their work
What you’ll need:
- A setup conducive to capturing ideas (laptop, pen and paper, whiteboard, etc.). Make sure your notes are kept in a place where you can refer back to
The steps:
The goal of this activity is explore what it means to move away from funder-driven evaluation.
A funder-driven evaluation centers funder priorities over staff and program participants. In order to move away from funder-driven evaluation, these commitments are needed:
