by Pilar Mendoza and Clare Nolan

Ending mass incarceration in the United States is no small feat. The scale and complexity of the challenge both creates and demands a diversity of thought and ideas. Our evaluation of the Ford Foundation’s strategy to end mass incarceration surfaced a number of insights for funders and other stakeholders about how to navigate across differences when advancing change strategies.

by Clare Nolan, Erika Takada, Pilar Mendoza, Ali Miller, and Meghan Hunt

Starting Smart and Strong is the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s kindergarten readiness strategy to build, test, and scale up community-driven solutions in three California communities. These communities have each gone through evolutions in their practices and adaptations to best support young learners, evolutions that follow five phases of scale we have documented through our long-term evaluation of this effort. The phases provide a framework to reflect on lessons and implications broadly relevant to systems change efforts that involve scaling.

by Cristina Whyte

At Engage R+D, we partner with nonprofits and their funders on several communities of practice across the country – in some cases as the facilitator and in other cases as the evaluator. The stakes are high, with organizations and individuals giving their time and expertise, learning and listening with peers, and aiming to build their own practices, and their field. How are these communities building connection and deepening shared learning around tough issues in a virtual environment? Looking across these diverse communities, we have identified five helpful facilitation practices.

by Clare Nolan, Cristina Whyte, and Anna Saltzman

We believe that evaluation and learning (E&L) leaders have the potential to be extraordinary and make critical contributions to equity and justice in our current transformative moment. But to do so, they need knowledge, tools, encouragement, and support. With this in mind, we are excited to release Evaluation and Learning at Foundations: A Field Guide geared towards helping E&L leaders working in philanthropy navigate their dynamic and complex roles.

by Michael Matsunaga and Kimberly Braxton

As evaluators, from Fall 2020 to Spring 2021 we spoke with national, state, and local early learning practitioners, advocates, and state system leaders on behalf of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help identify ways to rebuild early learning into a system that is better able to withstand shocks to its operations.

by Anna Saltzman

Our Engage R+D team recently held a learning session where we explored our experiences and impacts working across communities that were new to us. We discussed the challenges of working in different contexts, strategies for building connection and trust, and overall lessons learned. That conversation showed how much evaluators can and should learn through place-based inquiries at the outset of a project.

by Kimberly Braxton and Pilar Mendoza

Every day we deal with “polarities,” or dynamic tensions, in our work, personal lives, and broader society, yet we may not always notice them or recognize them as such. As two organizations committed to deepening our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practice, Equal Measure and Engage R+D recently embarked on a joint learning experience to explore some common polarities that exist in our work and organizational cultures. Polarity thinking can prompt us to increase our awareness about values that may be in tension with one another and which ones are being prioritized. In this blog, we share some of what we learned.

by Clare Nolan and Christina Garcia

What might it look like to design and commission evaluation differently? In this new case study, we describe the design charrette process in detail. Drawing on this experience, here are four ideas for how funders can increase the value of evaluation for grantees and others with potential to benefit from the knowledge they generate.

by Shayla Spilker and Kelly Bougere

How can foundation dollars be more powerful in a time of crisis? As COVID-19 continues to disproportionately impact communities that have long experienced economic disinvestment, many are asking how to leverage philanthropic funding differently for more immediate impact and greater social good. One solution comes in the form of impact investing, which includes a range of financial tools for both individuals and institutions seeking to do greater good with their dollars.

by Mary Gray and Sonia Taddy-Sandino

We spoke with André Chapman, the CEO and founder of Unity Care, along with board members, staff, funders, and the PropelNext team, to explore what it takes for leaders to survive and even thrive in times of crisis. This blog post highlights four key attributes of adaptive and resilient leadership.

by Meghan Hunt and Mary Gray

In 2019, the Getty Foundation partnered with Engage R+D to assess the impact of nearly three decades of the Getty Marrow internships. While much has changed in that time, many challenges remain. “Even as our sector faces an economic crisis and field-wide job losses, cultural organizations of all sizes must work with intention to combat structural racism and pioneer change,” wrote Weinstein, “particularly if we want it to return stronger and more equitable in the future.”

How can foundations support people of color in the arts? And what does it take to sustain and evolve these supports over time, through changing societal contexts?

by Kim Ammann Howard, Nikki Kalra, and Sarah Stachowiak

When the need to get money out the door feels especially urgent, foundation evaluation and program staff, grantees, and other key stakeholders can sometimes be reluctant to spend valuable time to engage in evaluation. This is when meaningful evaluation is most needed.

Evaluators play an important role in helping funders understand and respond more effectively and equitably to the needs of the communities we serve. The fields of philanthropy and evaluation will be more effective - and more just - when people with diverse perspectives and experiences are involved with and leading evaluation. Yet, the field of evaluation is predominantly White, leading many funders to wonder why there are not more people of color involved in evaluation efforts. It raises the question of who is left out of our evaluations, whose interpretation of the data is reflected, and whose voice matters most.

by Pilar Mendoza

There is growing recognition among evaluators and funders that we have more work to do if we want to transform our predominantly white sector into one that is inclusive and supportive of our BIPOC colleagues. If we truly want to transform our field and advance equity, we need to do a better job listening to those who have been historically marginalized to understand what it will take to support and amplify new and existing voices.

by Dr. Kelly Hannum

If you’ve been paying attention to evaluation practice in philanthropy, you know there is work to do to evolve who we are and what we do. The majority of evaluators aren’t white by accident. The toolbox of evaluation isn’t discounting tools because they don’t work, but because they aren’t trusted or valued in favor of more “traditional” approaches. It’s time to step up and reclaim a broader array of traditions and examine more comprehensive sources of insight and evidence.