Ask Nicole: Why Should Funders Evaluate Their Portfolios?
Over the past few years, I’ve found myself increasingly in spaces with funders.
Not only are they hiring me to evaluate individual grantee programs, but I’m also working alongside their grantees, support learning agendas, and strengthen strategy implementation.
In one recent engagement, I partnered with a funder to develop a theory of change designed to sharpen and improve their investments in sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. That work pushed me to think more deeply about the relationship between how funders award individual grants and the broader ecosystem a funder is trying to influence.
Recently, I’ve shifted my focus toward evaluating at a more strategic level.
Not only should we ask, “Did this grantee meet their outputs?”, funders should also ask, “Is this portfolio coherent?”Is it equitable? What measurable change is this portfolio driving, and how has it increased grantees’ capacity to sustain that change?
These are bigger questions. To answer them, funders — especially program officers responsible for managing funding portfolios — must step back and examine not only what they fund, but how and why they fund it.
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