Even though the term ‘evaluation’ is freely used in the foundation sector to encompass an almost limitless array of processes serving many different purposes1, there has recently been a clear shift away from using evaluation to measure the impact of past grants, and towards a more pragmatic process of gathering forward-looking information which enables grant makers and grantees alike to make ongoing improvements in their work.
In this new context, evaluation can be defined as: “the systematic and organised collection of information about the activities, characteristics, and outcomes of a programme, which are relevant to make judgments about the programme, improve programme effectiveness, and/or inform decisions about future programming”2. For European foundations, evaluation is an instrument which teaches important lessons to be used by foundations, their partner organisations, other civil society organisations, and governments. In this role, evaluation has increasingly been recognised as having the capacity to strengthen foundations’ accountability, management, understanding of their work’s results, and their credibility, by disseminating powerful lessons about those results3.
There is no off-the-shelf approach to foundation evaluation. For foundations, the central question in designing an evaluation process is: what do we most need to learn so we and our partners can meet the foundation’s goals? As foundations operate in different contexts, face different challenges, have different missions, values, strategies, assets, support and, as a consequence, participate in many different kinds of activity, they have different learning needs – and different learning goals require very different evaluation approaches. The various evaluation models and tools provide foundations with a range of options from which to choose the evaluation approach best suited to each foundation’s agenda.
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[1] From insight to action: new directions in foundation evaluation/Mark Kramer, Rebecca Graves, Jason Hirschhorn. - Boston: FSG Social Impact Advisors, 2007
[2] From insight to action, op. cit.
[3] The role of evaluation, op.cit.