Organizational Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building

OL-ECB TIG Week: Build Community to Build Capacity by Jan Fields

Hi! I’m Jan Fields, program evaluator for the Michigan Overdose Data to Action (MODA) Program in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS). My work focuses on evaluating prevention and harm reduction activities funded by the CDC’s Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) cooperative agreement. In addition to evaluating MODA activities, I am also the coordinator of a peer-to-peer (P2P) learning group consisting of OD2A-funded evaluators located in 66 jurisdictions throughout the country.

OL-ECB TIG Week: Meeting To Meet: Why We’re Terrible at Learning in Meetings by Elizabeth McGee

My name is Elizabeth McGee (she/her), founder of LEAP Consulting, and the soon-to-be Center for Radical Evaluation and Applied Research. Meetings. There are too many. They’re too long. They’re not productive. We don’t learn. And yet despite all of this, we don’t give them much attention even though they fill hours of our day. We …

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OL-ECB TIG Week: Putting Capacity Back in Capacity-Building by Gretchen Biesecker

Hi, I am Gretchen Biesecker, Principal Consultant with Bee’s Knees Consulting LLC in Somerville, MA. A large part of my practice focuses on evaluation capacity-building with nonprofits small and large, including AmeriCorps programs across the U.S. AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps is a federal agency that “brings people together to tackle the country’s most pressing challenges through national service and volunteering.” Through a national network, AmeriCorps enrolls 200,000 Americans each year to meet critical needs in education, the environment, disaster services, public health, among others.

OL-ECB TIG Week: Zoom Out Before Zooming In: Building Evaluation Capacity In a School District Using Implementation Science by Nora Phelan and Lily Corrigan

Hi! We are Nora Phelan and Lily Corrigan, researchers in the Evaluation & School Improvement Services division at Measurement Incorporated (MI). We partner with non-profit organizations, school districts, and government entities, supporting them to evaluate various programs and interventions, generally in educational settings. Today we are sharing some hot tips and lessons learned from our recent efforts to build evaluation capacity in a large school district using the principles of implementation science.

OL-ECB TIG Week: Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building for Philanthropic Organizations and Their Grantees While Flipping the Orthodoxies around Evaluation That Are Incongruent With Equity Work by Ava Yang-Lewis and Mark Lewis

Greetings! We’re Ava Yang-Lewis and Mark Lewis, Co-founders of ACT Research. In our work, we know that equitable evaluation processes and effective use of evaluation is as much about individual mindset and organizational culture (those tightly held beliefs about evaluation practice) as it is about actual evaluation approaches, methods, and tools. Over the last eight years, much of our work has been about learning and evaluation capacity building (L+ECB) with foundations and their grantees while flipping orthodoxies in foundation and nonprofit culture around evaluation that are incongruent with equity work.

OL-ECB TIG Week: Must We Call It ‘Evaluation’? – How ‘M&E’ Language Can be a Barrier to Institutionalising Learning by Barbara Klugman

Hello, I am Barbara Klugman (PhD), based in South Africa, once an anti-apartheid and women’s rights activist, now providing freelance strategy and evaluation supports for social justice funders, networks and NGOs.

I work with groups engaged in organising and advocating for social or environmental justice. In this process, I have come to realise that sometimes just the term ‘evaluation’ is enough to undermine the possibility of them initiating or further institutionalizing their information gathering, reflection, learning and adaptation processes. Their experience of ‘M&E’ is the requirement created by their funders that they name, in advance, what they will do and what they will influence. This might work alright for a group running an already-established service, but it is entirely guesswork and inappropriate for groups whose effectiveness requires them to shift both protest and advocacy strategies as the broader public and political discourse shifts, and as windows of opportunity for influence open and then close. Whatever they plan, they may need to shift.

OL-ECB TIG Week: Top 10 Considerations for Evaluation Capacity Building in Organizations (1/2) by Scott Chaplowe

We are closing out the OL-ECB TIG week by bringing back a blog with evergreen content that was so popular the first time around that we needed to give it another day in the sun. You can view part 2 of this original post here. We hope you enjoy. My name is Scott Chaplowe and …

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OL-ECB TIG Week: Value of a Peer Network for Evaluation Staff at Nonprofit Organizations by Shenandoah Gale and Andrea Scallon

Hello! We are Shenandoah Gale, Director of Evaluation & Learning at N Street Village and Andrea Scallon, Director of Measurement, Evaluation & Learning at Miriam’s Kitchen. We serve on the Advisory Council of Measure4Change (M4C) and wanted to share this Rad Resource that increases our capacity in the hopes that you can find ways to …

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