Engaging Stakeholders, What Works?
Most conversations about stakeholder engagement and participatory evaluation have shifted from focusing on the question of why to involve stakeholders to how to engage stakeholders most effectively in...
View ArticleEarly Learning Indicators - Race to the Top
By December 2011, the U.S. government will allocate $500 million to states through the Race to the Top (RTTT) Early Learning Challenge (ELC). The ELC is a new grant competition designed to support...
View ArticleMaking Sense of the Future of News
There’s been a lot of media attention recently on the future of the news industry. This month, The Economist published a special report, Bulletins from the Future, highlighting the major ways in which...
View ArticleStrategic Evaluation: Where do we go from here?
I was recently talking about my experience as an evaluator with a group of students at the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington in Seattle. One of the students made a comment...
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Cultural Competence in Evaluation
by Katrina L. Bledsoe, Ph.D., Education Development Center, Inc. Recently, I had a fortuitous discussion with a dean from a reputable medical school in the east coast who asserted that culture...
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Finally! An Approach to Evaluating Complexity
A number of years ago, I had the privilege of conducting a three-year evaluation of a new and promising educational reform effort called, The Saturn School of Tomorrow in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was...
View ArticleShared Measurement for Collective Impact
Read Fay Hanleybrown's post, Shared Measurement for Collective Impact, on the Social Impact blog.
View ArticleReflections for a New Era in Evaluation
By John S. Bare (Guest Blogger) About John Bare: A former journalist, John holds a Ph.D. in mass communication research from the University of North Carolina and has 14 years of experience leading...
View ArticleBipartisan Evaluation: Reaching Across the Methodological Aisle
By Jackie Williams Kaye, Director of Research and Evaluation - Wellspring Advisors Two weeks ago a taxi driver asked me where I was from and I said “Washington, DC.” You probably think that is...
View ArticleClicks to Connection: Social Media & Evaluation
Last week, FSG joined over 2500 evaluators from across the country and around the world at the American Evaluation Association 2011 Conference in Anaheim, CA. Ellen Martin, Sr. Consultant, and I...
View ArticleStrategic Learning and Milking Cows
I was recently invited to participate in a session for the 2012 National Conference of the Grantmakers for Effective Philanthropy (GEO). The session is titled “The Hard Truth About Strategic Learning...
View ArticleHow to Ask Latinos? Understanding Cultural Differences to Conduct Better...
Note: This post originally appeared on AEA365, the American Evaluation Association's blog. I am Efrain Gutierrez and I work for FSG, a nonprofit consulting firm that helps foundations, nonprofits and...
View ArticlePurpose-Filled Evaluations
Happy New Year from FSG’s Strategic Learning and Evaluation blog! As I welcomed 2012, I sat with friends around a table for an annual New Year’s Day brunch. Each year, we have taken time to reflect on...
View ArticleThe Intersection of Strategy & Evaluation: Philanthropy’s Sweet Spot
Read Hallie Preskill's post, The Intersection of Strategy & Evaluation: Philanthropy’s Sweet Spot, on the Social Impact blog.
View ArticleHow Can We Make Systems Work Faster for Early Learning
Recently, for our project work on early childhood care and education, my FSG colleagues and I reviewed the work of a few, well-regarded projects that have been able to employ data and indicators across...
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Beyond Thinking Evaluatively
Imagine if every philanthropic organization had a system that helped its leadership, staff, and board answer pressing questions about its strategy; questions such as, whether the assumptions guiding...
View Article“Programmatic” Evidence of a Paradigm Shift in Evaluation
GEO’s National Conference kicks off this week and a quick peek at the program makes my heart beat joyously. The theme of the conference is Smarter Grantmaking | Stronger Nonprofits | Better Results....
View ArticleLearning! Everyone says they want to do it, but...
“Life is a learning experience, only if you learn.” ~Yogi Berra I love this quote. Somehow, Yogi Berra’s words always seem to have a precious nugget of truth and insight embedded in them. What I take...
View ArticleShifting the Evaluation Paradigm
In philanthropy, evaluation is often used to test a specific theory of change: to see whether a grant-funded intervention has had the desired effect. But there is another, underlying theory of change...
View ArticleMaking Shared Measurement Work
I have been excited to hear about many of the collective impact initiatives going on across the country and around the world as a way to address complex social problems. As described in an FSG article...
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