| Roundtable: Building Evaluative Capacity in Israeli Social Change Nonprofits |
| Roundtable Presentation 639 to be held in Douglas Boardroom on Friday, November 9, 3:35 PM to 4:20 PM |
| Presenter(s): |
| Nancy Strichman, Independent Consultant, strichman@ie.technion.ac.il |
| Bill Bickel, University of Pittsburgh, bickel@pitt.edu |
| Abstract: Nonprofit organizations need to continually learn from their experiences and adapt to changing circumstances in order to sustain themselves in today's environment. This 'adaptive capacity', considered one of the essential organizational capacities for enabling nonprofits to achieve their mission, requires nonprofits to nurture organizational learning, using evaluation as a tool to enhance learning and performance (Strichman, Bickel & Marshood, in press; Connolly, 2006; Letts, Ryan & Grossman, 1999). This presentation describes a two-year field testing of evaluation capacity building materials and processes with a set of small social change nonprofits in Israel. The work was sponsored by the One-to-One Children's Fund and conducted under the auspices of Shatil, The New Israel Fund's Empowerment and Training Center for Social Change Organizations in Israel. The authors report on the challenges faced by participant organizations in “growing” their evaluative capacities and the efficacy of the materials and processes used in the work. |