Program Evaluation Guide
The Robert R. McCormick Foundation has recently published this very useful Program Evaluation Guide.
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The Robert R. McCormick Foundation has recently published this very useful Program Evaluation Guide.
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We all know that our city, region and community is different from those neighbouring us and different again from those in other provinces. The mix and interactions of the people, organizations, companies, local government, history and context make each city, region, place unique. This uniqueness presents both challenges and opportunities to collaborating around complex issues in a place-based context.
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IDeA (improvement and development agency in the UK) published 'A glass half-full: how an asset approach can improve community health and well-being'.
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The Aspen Institute and Rich Harwood of The Harwood Institute collaborated to develop a white paper on 'Assessing Community Information Needs - A Practical Guide'.
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The authors of this paper argue that big changes only occur through advocacy efforts and yet, advocacy is an elusive activity to evaluate.
Advocacy requires an approach and a way of thinking about success, failure, progress, and best practices that is very different than the way we approach traditional philanthropic projects such as delivering services or modeling social innovations. It is more subtle and uncertain, less linear, and because it is fundamentally about politics, depends on the outcomes of fights in which good ideas and sound evidence don't always prevail. This difference poses a particular challenge in evaluating advocacy efforts, exacerbating the resistance to advocacy from foundations that naturally resist in investing in projects that they can't judge as successes or failures.
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I just spent two days with colleagues attending Policy Link's Equity Summit in Detroit. There were 2300 folks attending from across the US and internationally. The theme of the summit was to raise and change the discussion around Equtiy - that it is no longer an ethical thing to do but is becoming an economic imperative as the demographics are significantly shifting in the US.
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