Date: Thursday, October 22, 2026
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
Hi, we are three independent consultants – Laura Lehman, Kelsey Manne (Donnellan), and Virginia Roncaglione – who collaborated on a long-term complex project that, though values-aligned on paper, in reality challenged our collective commitment to equity. As we reflected on the ups and downs of our work together, we recognized a common tension across our experiences: As external learning partners, we typically work closely with internal learning teams who share aligned values, understandings, and goals (e.g., creating space for learning that supports shifting power to grantees and community members). Meanwhile, other organizational staff and leadership often sit along a spectrum in terms of understanding, valuing, and taking action when it comes to learning practices and the values that they represent.
It is common to find that the RFPs we respond to don’t match the reality of the systems and structures they are operating within. As our ideals and commitments face reality, we have learned a few deceptively simple lessons about moving forward – however imperfectly – while doing our best to stick to our values:
Lesson #1: Create space for internal learning teams to navigate complexity and misaligned internal structures
Learning from the culture of collaboration and creativity that we have built with each other, we work to create a trusted environment with our direct counterparts by showing up as full humans and sharing responsibility for the outcomes. We are in it together. While we are often on the same page about the work, successfully engaging in learning practices is challenged by the more rigid and siloed cultures that they often work within. Our external role and perspective can at times provide a buffer, supporting internal teams by co-creating processes that can open up different kinds of conversations with their colleagues – skills that we have honed through our work with other consultants and with each other.
Lesson #2: Help identify and validate what is possible within organizational structures as they are
We’ve recognized the importance of identifying what’s genuinely possible within a given context. Two foundations, for instance, can differ sharply in decision-making authority and use of their endowment: one may lean on “that’s how it’s always been done” to stay within traditional structures, while another challenges those systems to build something more community-driven. Identifying where an organization sits on that spectrum – by asking questions like “Who is the final decision-maker?” “Who else needs to be involved in this decision?” “How do you gather input from community members or grantees who will be impacted?” – lets us move at a sustainable pace. Though pushing an organization to share decision-making power may not be realistic, working within these constraints does not mean the work is not meaningful or moving forward. Change is iterative.
Lesson #3: Move in the ways that you can
There is no guarantee that any given approach will work. We may value equity and true community ownership, but an organization might be too far from holding the mindsets and trusted relationships that make it possible to move forward in the ways that we would like. When this is the case, what we have found most important is clarity about our values and boundaries. Once that grounding is established, we’ve found it helpful to reframe success. For example, strong pushback on an observation as a sign of engagement is more meaningful than no engagement or performative agreement, recognizing that questions and concerns are rooted in the team’s commitment to their work rather than a desire for status quo. Building space for healthy conflict is good for progress. What matters is that the process and commitment to relationships with clients, partners, and community members outlasts any single engagement.
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