Evaluation Managers and Supervisors TIG Week: Building Culture and Capacity for Evaluation Through Stewardship and Accountability by Esther Nolton

Date: Saturday, July 12, 2025

My name is Esther Nolton, Principal Consultant & Founder of Everstead Strategies—a boutique consultancy offering organizational strategy, evidence, and culture building services. I’m a methodologist with two decades of experience in research and evaluation. For over 10 years, I have managed teams and mentored graduate students through various program evaluation and applied research projects.

In this post, I’ll share learnings from my experiences about building the culture and capacity of organizations, teams, and individuals so that evaluations are more useful and relevant to those who need them. Years ago, I created a framework that described the relationship between use, influence, and capacity (Nolton, 2020, p. 20). This framework was the evaluation rendition of “the reward for good (and valued) work is more work”. Essentially, when evidence is useful, it is valued. Evidence that is valued is demanded. Evidence that is demanded is relevant. Evidence that is relevant is useful. That’s why I believe it’s essential for evaluation managers and supervisors to be good stewards of evaluation and advocate for accountability.

Hot Tip: Meaningful Stewardship

This post really isn’t solely for evaluation managers and supervisors. It’s intended for anyone interested in being more intentional about embedding evaluation more in their organization. Folks at all levels of the organization should championevaluation, not just managers and supervisors, as an essential function that supports the generation and utilization of evidence to inform strategic decisions.

Cool Tricks to be a good steward of evaluation:

• Embed evaluative thinking into program and policy planning by asking questions early and often about defining standards or goals and identifying indicators of success.
• Engage diverse perspectives to understand information needs about the process, outcomes, and impact of the evaluand.
• Create learning agendas to prioritize strategic questions about organizational programs, policies, and activities.
• Build internal or join external (e.g., local affiliates, AEA, other VOPEs) communities of practice to support continuous learning and improvement together with partners as collaborators, not just as observers or consumers of evaluation.
• Share evaluation findings AND the decisions/improvements they inform to help folks appreciate the value evaluations bring to the work.

Hot Tip: Responsive Accountability

As practitioners and managers, aim to maintain high-quality evaluations by holding yourself and your team accountable to established standards, principles, and values that guide our practice.

Cool Tricks to build in more accountability:

• How will you share information about the evaluation and its findings with people involved in or affected by the project? What will they get out of it?
• Assess evaluability of evaluation questions to avoid setting your team or organization up for failure, then come up with a plan to answer the feasible questions.
• Familiarize yourself and your team with established standards and principles related to evaluation practice (e.g., CDC, CRE, JCSEE)
• Help your team discern between different evaluation methods and approaches by being well-versed in myriad (and emerging) options, how they are used, conditions and factors for employing (including resources), and benefits/challenges of each one.
• Utilize helpful tools (e.g., evaluation checklists, CRE-specific checklists, card decks, guides) to address potential blind spots and pitfalls before they become issues. Here are some example probes that I use in practice:
  • Whose perspective and values are (not) included in the evaluation design?
  • Who will the evaluation serve/harm?
  • What are the consequences (positive or negative) of the evaluation?
  • What will it take (e.g., money, time, caregiving, work sacrifices) for participants/partners to contribute to the evaluation?
  • What risks may the participants/partners be taking to offer their honest insights? How will you seek to protect their privacy and safety?
  • How will you share information about the evaluation and its findings with people involved in or affected by the project? What will they get out of it?

The American Evaluation Association is hosting Evaluation Managers and SupervisorsTIG Week with our colleagues in the Evaluation Managers and Supervisors Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our Gov’t Eval TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.