Apr 03, 2017

Centre for Development Innovation, Wageningen University and Research Centre;

This guide is primarily for evaluators working in the international development sector. However, if you are a commissioner of an evaluation, an evaluation manager or a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) officer, you too will find it useful. Too often evaluations are shelved, with very little being done to bring about change within organisations that requested the evaluation in the first place. This guide will explain how you can make your evaluations more useful. It will help you to better understand some conceptual issues and appreciate how evaluations can contribute to changing mindsets and empowering stakeholders. On a practical level, the guide presents core guiding principles and pointers on how to design and facilitate evaluations that matter. Furthermore, it shows you how you can get your primary intended users and other key stakeholders to contribute effectively to the evaluation process.

Mar 29, 2017

Independent Sector; Guidestar; BBB Wise Giving Alliance;

Charting Impact is a common framework that allows staff, boards, stakeholders, donors, volunteers, and others to work together, learn from each other and serve the community better. It complements planning, evaluation, and assessment that organizations already undertake, and can be used by nonprofits and foundations of all sizes and missions. Charting Impact is a joint project of Independent Sector, GuideStar, and the BBB Wise Giving Alliance. This discussion guide explains the five questions at the heart of Charting Impact and offers guidance for developing your organization's responses to them. This material should help your discussions with key members of your organization as you consider how to communicate your goals, strategies, capabilities, progress indicators, and accomplishments through this framework.

Nov 01, 2016

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation;

Outcome-focused philanthropy is the Hewlett Foundation's approach to how we practice strategic philanthropy. It guides how we do our work, from start to finish. We've been practicing strategic philanthropy for more than a decade—focusing on what problem or opportunity we're trying to address, whether we're achieving our outcomes and why (or why not), and how we'll know. Outcome-focused philanthropy, OFP for short, builds on our experience and lessons learned. OFP maintains our commitment to rigor and results. But it gives equal weight to ongoing learning and adaptation—to ensure staff and grantees have the flexibility they need to succeed. And it embodies our commitment to working in partnership with other funders and organizations. "A practical guide to outcome-focused philanthropy" is a roadmap for our staff as they work across the four stages of a strategy's lifecycle: origination; implementation; refresh, and exit. The guidebook includes a set of worksheets that provide an at-a-glance overview of what staff need to think about and do at each stage. These worksheets also are available as a standalone document. The OFP guidebook is primarily for Hewlett Foundation staff—in both our programs and other departments whose work is equally essential for our strategies to succeed. But we hope our grantees and other funders also will find it helpful. Their work has greatly informed our own.

Mar 01, 2016

Big Lottery Fund;

This guidance has been produced to assist applicants in preparing their detailed (Stage 2) applications to the Coastal Communities Fund. It provides guidance on identifying, assessing and monitoring the economic impact potential of projects using an Indicator Framework, against which individual projects will be appraised.

Jan 01, 2016

Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation;

As part of your grant application you will need to construct a series of "output" and "outcome" performance metrics that describe what success will look like at the end of the grant period and how it will be measured. This brief guide is intended to help you build rigorous and specific metrics that will become the basis of future performance reporting to the Foundation.

Jan 01, 2016

International Development Research Centre (IDRC); Better Evaluation;

This free digital resource provides a clear and systematic guide for managers of an evaluation, whether this is being done by an external evaluator, an internal team or a hybrid team.  In addition to guidance it provides , links to further detail and examples as required. A particular feature is the GeneraTOR which prompts for particular information to produce a draft Terms of Reference document which can be shared, reviewed and finalised with other stakeholders.

Mar 01, 2015

Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation;

In March 2015, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (EMKF) created a new department tasked with evaluating the Foundation's impact— through both its grant-making and the programs it operates directly. The purpose of this document is to describe and explain the Foundation's policies for measurement and evaluation, which have been drawn from the best practices of others in this field and tailored to the needs of EMKF. Our goal is to clearly describe—for associates, grantees, and the community—the purpose, values, and tools used in evaluation at EMKF. Our evaluation work is guided by six key values: 1. Meaningful—we focus on collecting and analyzing data that directly informs our strategies and goals. Evaluations should include useful and actionable results that assist board, staff, and grantees in decision-making. 2. Credible—evaluations are designed to meet the highest evidentiary standard possible, while recognizing that different approaches are necessary depending on the context. In addition, evaluation materials seek to be as rigorous and accurate as possible, while also noting important limitations and assumptions. 3. Timely—we design and conduct evaluations with the goal of providing results quickly enough to be relevant for informing strategic decisions. 4. Collaborative—all evaluations should be designed with input from multiple stakeholders, including the board, senior leadership, program staff, grantees, and external advisors as appropriate for a particular project. 5. Flexible—the Foundation and its grantees work in areas that are complex and highly fluid, requiring evaluation approaches that are customized to meet the needs and context of each area. In addition, evaluation approaches should be designed to allow for modifications resulting from mid-course corrections or other changes that arise over time. 6. Transparent—we strive to share the results and lessons learned from our grantmaking with the broader community (other funders, non-profit organizations, policymakers, influencers, and the public) so that they may gain from our experiences.

Feb 01, 2015

Leap of Reason Ambassadors Community;

We felt we should begin our work together by crafting a common definition of "high-performance organization." We knew that without a thoughtfully developed, thoroughly vetted definition of "high performance," any call for raising performance in our sector would ring hollow. In addition to providing a common definition of "high performance," the PI also lays out in detail the seven organizational pillars that can help you achieve high performance. To crib from the late author Stephen Covey, these are the seven habits of highly effective organizations. We do not intend this document to be a manifesto. We hope it will be a North Star to guide leaders on a journey of continuous learning and improvement--so they can make as much difference as they possibly can for the people and causes they serve.