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Building System-Wide Awareness, Readiness, and Capacity for Program Evaluation: Strategies, Challenges, and Lessons Learned from a National Capacity Building Effort
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| Presenter(s):
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| Barbara Bedney,
United Jewish Communities,
barbara.bedney@ujc.org
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| Abstract:
United Jewish Communities (UJC), the non-profit, umbrella organization of the Jewish federation system, represents 155 federations and 400 smaller communities that provide humanitarian assistance through more than 1,300 institutions in North America, Israel and the world. As part of a broad strategy to promote research and evidence-based practice in the federation system, and to create leadership and a shared learning environment throughout the system, UJC has initiated a multi-level capacity-building effort to increase the ability of federations to engage in program evaluation. This session will provide an overview of the level-of-intervention framework that is guiding our capacity-building efforts, highlight our efforts to promote the use of logic models and systematic, theory-driven evaluation in all these capacity-building activities, address some of the challenges that have emerged during the capacity-building process, and present a series of lessons learned for other organizations engaging in (or thinking of engaging in) similar capacity-building efforts.
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Evaluation Capacity Among Nonprofit Organizations: Is the Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full?
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| Presenter(s):
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| Joanne Carman,
University of North Carolina Charlotte,
jgcarman@uncc.edu
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| Kimberly A Fredericks,
Indiana State University,
kfredericks@isugw.indstate.edu
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| Abstract:
In order to better understand the evaluation capacity of nonprofit organizations, we gathered data through a mail survey of nonprofit organizations providing human services in the state of Indiana. In this paper, we report the findings of a cluster analysis which suggests that when it comes to evaluation capacity, there are three types of nonprofit organizations: those that are satisfied with their capacity to do evaluation; those that have the internal support for evaluation, yet have evaluation design, data collection, and other issues; and those that are struggling across the board with evaluation and report little support for evaluation from funders, the board, management, and staff. The findings from this study not only illustrates the range that we see in the evaluation capacity of nonprofit organizations, but it also helps to identify specific areas where evaluators, funders, and nonprofit managers can help to improve the evaluation capacity of nonprofit organizations.
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Facilitating Capacity Building Through Organizational Development Processes: Engaging the Independent Living Movement in Evaluation
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| Presenter(s):
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| Tiffeny Jimenez,
Michigan State University,
jimene17@msu.edu
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| Abstract:
Program evaluation within the Independent Living (IL) movement has recently become a ground-breaking and crucial national endeavor. Although Centers for Independent Living (CIL) are grassroots organizations that often would like to sustain their organizational functioning without the help of government funding, many do receive those funds, and given the political climate, these organizations are being impelled more than ever to demonstrate their effectiveness in improving the lives of people with disabilities. CILs in Michigan have begun to take on this mission of evaluating and proving their worth through means of Organizational Development (OD). CILs in Michigan, have begun to work on this through a Process Consultation approach in partnership with other supportive agencies. This non-expert model approach is consistent with the philosophy of IL and has effectively built the organizational capacities of CILs. The discussion of this work has implications for theory and practical approaches in facilitating processes of OD.
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