|
Session Title: Changing Our Tune: Reinventing Evaluation While Your Organization Transforms
|
|
Panel Session 858 to be held in Pacific D on Saturday, Nov 5, 9:50 AM to 11:20 AM
|
|
Sponsored by the Non-profit and Foundations Evaluation TIG
|
| Chair(s): |
| Lester Baxter, The Pew Charitable Trusts, lbaxter@pewtrusts.org
|
| Abstract:
Every organization with an internal evaluation function struggles with questions of that unit's mission, responsibilities, and relationship to the larger organization. This panel will examine what happened to an evaluation department when the private foundation within which it was well-established became a public charity. This change in legal status led to a dramatic transformation of the organization, including the shift to directly operating the majority of its policy reform projects and an expanded infrastructure.
Panelists will discuss how the organization's rationale for evaluation (and its complementary roles in planning and knowledge sharing) evolved in response to internal changes. Discussion will focus on the unit's re-envisioning of its role, describing which efforts failed, which are succeeding, and which are still in flux. The panel will be of interest to evaluators working in complex or changing institutional environments, and those interested in the role of evaluation and planning in policy change efforts.
|
|
Taking Our Own Medicine: Lessons From Assessing and Reshaping our Evaluation Practice
|
| Scott Scrivner, The Pew Charitable Trusts, sscrivner@pewtrusts.org
|
| Lester Baxter, The Pew Charitable Trusts, lbaxter@pewtrusts.org
|
|
As evaluators, we are used to asking and answering questions about what works, what doesn't, and why, and using findings to make sound judgments about how to allocate resources and design and run effective programs. It is perhaps less common to apply our evaluative lens to our own practice. This presentation will describe how the Planning and Evaluation department at the Pew Charitable Trusts responded to large shifts in the organization's dominant business model, staffing, and geographic focus-focusing on what we've learned from assessing our approach to policy change and advocacy evaluation.
Discussion topics will include our efforts to: reconsider major aspects of our evaluation model; balance learning and accountability to meet the needs of internal audiences; respond to demands for more timely mid-course evaluations; and expand stakeholders to include new audiences, such as external funders.
|
|
|
The Evolution of a Planning and Evaluation Unit's Role in Planning for Policy Change Campaigns
|
| Nicole Trentacoste, The Pew Charitable Trusts, ntrentacoste@pewtrusts.org
|
| Scott Scrivner, The Pew Charitable Trusts, sscrivner@pewtrusts.org
|
|
Pew's shift in 2004 from a private foundation to a public charity resulted in significant changes to the Planning and Evaluation (P&E) unit's approach to program planning (including designing evaluable projects), largely due to Pew's new focus on directly operating its programs, ability to engage in a broader range of advocacy tactics, and growth in demand for planning assistance.
As a foundation, P&E's primary planning role was to oversee the development of grantmaking strategies. Since Pew's change in legal status, our planning practice has evolved to meet the changing needs of the organization. We have found that in an organization that directly manages advocacy campaigns, planning must be flexible and timely, and planning does not stop once a strategy has been designed. Discussants will describe the ways in which P&E now incorporates tools and processes to help with the effective design, implementation and management of programs.
| |
|
Tensions and Ties Between Evaluation and Program Planning in a Changing Organization
|
| Glee Holton, The Pew Charitable Trusts, gholton@pewtrusts.org
|
| Nicole Trentacoste, The Pew Charitable Trusts, ntrentacoste@pewtrusts.org
|
| Lester Baxter, The Pew Charitable Trusts, lbaxter@pewtrusts.org
|
|
It's not uncommon for private foundations to have "Planning & Evaluation" departments, and evaluators recognize the important linkages and overlaps between these two roles. At Pew, the tensions and ties between Planning and Evaluation were put to the test when the organization transformed from a private foundation making grants to a public charity that now largely directly operates programs and engages in a broad range of advocacy tactics.
This presentation will discuss how the organization's change in status and operating model affected the linkages between planning and evaluation, and in particular how we've adapted and developed evaluative tools to use in planning for advocacy and policy change campaigns. We will also discuss our approach to knowledge sharing and using evaluation findings in planning, particularly in light of our new need to evaluate in-house campaigns rather than the work of external grantees.
| |