Date: Monday, November 17, 2025
Hello AEA365! We are Nivedita Ranade, Program Director, and Neda Moussapour, Project Coordinator, of Expanding the Bench® (ETB)’s new effort, Expanding the Bench: Regional (ETB:R). In today’s blog, we’ll highlight the significance of locally grounded work, particularly as a powerful form of resistance in today’s challenging geopolitical climate, and share how ETB: Regional is putting this approach into practice.
As we witness growing backlash against equity and inclusion efforts across the U.S., especially in certain regions, the need to ground evaluation in local context has become even more urgent. National strategies alone cannot address the complex, place-specific barriers that communities face, particularly those that have been historically marginalized or are currently under political pressure.
In many states, policies and rhetoric are actively working to dismantle equity-centered frameworks, silence diverse voices, and limit conversations around race, power, and systemic injustice. Our place-based work resists this erasure by honoring local histories, elevating community knowledge, and supporting Indigenous, racially, and ethnically diverse evaluators who are deeply embedded in their communities.
“Our connections to place and time allow us to stay connected to our ancestry” — Sharon Attipoe-Dorcoo, et al., “A Reconciliation Framework for Storytelling” (in Trauma-Informed Placemaking)(Dr. Attipoe-Dorcoo is an ETB: Regional Advisory Team Member)
When we invest in local evaluation microsystems — supporting regionally tailored strategies for learning, connection, and capacity-building — we increase the relevance and impact of evaluation practice and protect and advance the values of equity, justice, and inclusion. Place-based work ensures that progress is not only possible but sustainable, even in the most difficult environments.
Rooted in the principles of culturally responsive and equitable evaluation (CREE), ETB:R serves as a catalyst to strengthen these local evaluation microsystems. These microsystems are smaller but critical systems or environments where the interactions within the environment are influenced by the geographic, cultural, and community factors unique to that place with a significant impact on the functioning or well-being of the larger ecosystem it exists within. Through co-created regionally tailored strategies for connection, capacity-building, professional development, and resource sharing, ETB:R is working to connect these areas. This initiative launched in early 2025 as a pilot in the Southern U.S. (Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana), a region historically underrepresented in evaluation funding, leadership, and infrastructure.
Based on our learnings thus far, we have identified ETB:R South microsystem mapping as a key activity that aims to visualize and analyze the existing and potential interconnections and relationships between the actors (evaluators, individuals who conduct evaluation in their professional role [i.e., ‘accidental’ evaluators], funders, nonprofits, academic institutions, local, state, and federal government agencies) and their partners in the U.S. South microsystem. This map will help identify key actors, existing connections, gaps, and opportunities for strengthening collaboration within the region. This work will also inform ETB:R’s efforts in this region, including relationship building, conducting regional activities, and resource dissemination. The goal of this microsystem mapping is to address and close the gaps created by challenges such as low credibility for ‘accidental’ evaluators, pay and opportunity inequities for evaluators and ‘accidental’ evaluators, and power dynamics and silos between funders and other institutions in this region.
If you are an actor in the U.S. South:
The American Evaluation Association is hosting Expanding The Bench® week. Expanding the Bench® is an initiative committed to diversifying evaluation and elevating culturally responsive and equitable evaluation. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from partners of Expanding The Bench®. 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.