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Session Title: Evaluation to Inform Learning and Adaptation in Grant Making Initiatives
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Panel Session 546 to be held in Panzacola Section H4 on Friday, Nov 13, 1:40 PM to 3:10 PM
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Sponsored by the Non-profit and Foundations Evaluation TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| Marilyn Darling, Signet Consulting & Research LLC, mdarling@signetconsulting.com
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| Abstract:
Frequently, the initial hypotheses underlying a strategy that is intended to bring about change in a complex system are imperfect. The faster a grant maker can learn what is and is not working and improve its strategy, the greater its impact is likely to be. Evaluation can be one vital source of information to support this learning. This session will examine challenges, as well as promising practices, in using evaluation to inform learning and adaptation. Participants will hear and discuss stories about experience of Lumina Foundation for Education, the Ontario Trillium Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, all of which are part of peer-learning group convened by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations to strengthen learning practices. The session also will present results of research, by Signet Research & Consulting, examining grant maker learning practices, and identifying practices and tools that participants can test in their own organizations.
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Making Learning Intentional at the Packard Foundation
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| Gale Berkowitz, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, gberkowitz@packard.org
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| Liane Wong, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, lwong@packard.org
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This past year the Packard Foundation began a cross-foundation learning group to identify and share the learning practices across the foundation's programmatic areas in order to accelerate our effectiveness. As one example, the Children's Health Insurance subprogram uses learning to inform and improve strategy effectiveness, by continually tracking a set of indicators that are grounded in a theory of change and logic model, and well-validated in this field. The evaluation team works in partnership with grantees to learn from the front line what is and is not working, and shares this with grantees and other stakeholders through a variety of modalities. This presentation will examine how program staff, evaluators, and grantees use a variety of information, from indicators to anecdotal experience both within the Foundation and in the field, to improve strategy effectiveness.
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Evaluation and Learning With Grantees at The Ontario Trillium Foundation
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| Blair Dimock, The Ontario Trillium Foundation, bdimock@trilliumfoundation.org
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| Patricia Else, The Ontario Trillium Foundation, pelse@trilliumfoundation.org
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| Maja Saletto Jankovic, The Ontario Trillium Foundation, msjankov@trilliumfoundation.org
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| Samantha Burdette, The Ontario Trillium Foundation, sburdette@trilliumfoundation.org
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When it launched the Future Fund two years ago, the Ontario Trillium Foundation departed from its historic grant making approach. Aimed at building the capacity of Ontario's nonprofit sector, this initiative makes larger, longer-term grants to collaboratives, and entails more intensive engagement with grantees. Learning how to make this new approach to grant making work required a shift from the foundation's typical research and evaluation approach. Historically, the foundation has conducted impact research periodically, focusing on segments of its portfolio. Although this approach has enabled the foundation to discover ways to increase its impact, including how to increase grant making in aboriginal communities, it is not sufficient for the rapid learning necessary to succeed with a radically different approach. This presentation will explore how program and research staff work in partnership, with each other and with grantees, to assess whether and how this new way of doing business is working.
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Integrating Evaluation and Learning at Lumina Foundation for Education
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| Mary Williams, Lumina Foundation for Education, mwilliams@luminafoundation.org
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Achieving the Dream, a five-year-old initiative of Lumina Foundation for Education, is built on an elegant theory of change. A central hypothesis was: if we can create a culture of evidence within community colleges, then the colleges can identify achievement gaps, create and evaluate interventions to reduce those gaps, and institutionalize the strategies that prove effective. Five metrics were derived from the theory of change and tracked from the outset, providing baseline data and feedback on the implementation strategies colleges selected and experimented with. Although participating colleges agreed to track data and make them public, there have been challenges in building colleges' capacity to provide the data. The evaluation was narrower in scope than the initiative's goals and objectives, and was complemented by other ways of assessing strategy effectiveness. This presentation will explore how evaluation can be integrated with other methods of gauging results to inform learning and adaptation.
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Emergent Learning to Increase Strategy Effectiveness and Impact
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| Marilyn Darling, Signet Consulting & Research LLC, mdarling@signetconsulting.com
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Emergent Learning was created in the mid 1990s to address obstacles organizations experienced to learning in the midst of complex challenges. It is designed to build the capacity of an organization or network to achieve intended results by continually testing and improving its strategies and the hypotheses that underpin them. With support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Signet Research & Consulting, LLC conducted a research project framed by the question: "How can Emergent Learning practices and tools be adapted and instituted to enable a grant maker to increase the impact of its investments over the course of a grant program, avert failures through in-course correction, and increase the transparency of portfolio management?" Based on case studies of North American foundations, this presentation will explore insights concerning common challenges grant makers confront in using learning to increase their impact and practical approaches to addressing these challenges.
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