A Funder's Guide to Evaluation
By Peter York; 139 pages; published by Fieldstone Alliance
A few years ago, accountability and transparency became all the rage. After several disasters in the corporate world, everyone was ready to open the blinds and let the world see what was going on in the boardroom. None of this was really new to the nonprofit sector, which has always had to answer to stakeholders and the general public alike. Nevertheless, a shift occurred in the nonprofit world soon after it took hold among corporations. This increased thrust to be accountable and transparent brought evaluation to the forefront. After all, you can't be accountable if you don't even know what you are doing. Soon evaluation was a major requirement from nonprofit funders. They expected grantees to evaluate how their money was used and what the outcomes were. This led to new challenges and frustrations because many nonprofits simply don't have the resources or expertise to conduct the kind of evaluations funders now demand.
This book aims to address some of these challenges by bringing evaluation back to the funders. York even gives it a new name - evaluative learning - to make it more palatable to those who have been turned off by the process in the past. He argues that funders and grant recipients must work collaboratively so that evaluative learning can serve everyone. Grantees gain a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, and funders can better evaluate their own funding practices to see where they should be spending their energy and their money. Still, evaluation for the sake of evaluation - even if some learning comes from it - can be a tough sell among those who are strapped for cash or resources. That's why York makes it very clear that evaluative learning can actually serve as a capacity-building tool. Armed with better information, gleaned through evaluative learning, nonprofit leaders can make better decisions about how best to use organizational resources. Nonprofit managers can better monitor, assess, and adjust program resources, and the organization as a whole can be more adaptive and responsive because it has taken the time to evaluate and understand where it excels, and which initiatives might best be left to others.
This book is designed to help funders decide whether and how to support the use of evaluation as an organizational capacity-building tool. However, it makes sense for any nonprofit leader to be informed about the latest trends and developments in evaluation. York will open your eyes to the many benefits that evaluative learning can offer, and you will be in a better position to work collaboratively with funders and make your case for why they should support your organization's evaluative learning. The book is well organized, clearly written, and includes all kinds of useful tools and resources to help you get started on a better evaluation process today.
Buy the book:
Canada: buy through Amazon.ca
