Date: Saturday, November 22, 2025
Hello AEA365! I am Kate Szczerbacki, Director of Learning, Evaluation, and Capacity Building at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving. I’m delighted to contribute the final blog of Expanding the Bench (ETB) week by offering the perspective of a funder that has invested in and engaged in an array of ETB offerings. These opportunities expanded our organizational understanding of culturally responsive and equitable evaluation (CREE) and built connections with funders and evaluators committed to this practice.
I’m an ETB supporter because they play a necessary role in the evaluation and philanthropic ecosystem. In addition to creating activities and resources that advance CREE practice, ETB is relentlessly committed to building relationships and community. They are not reinventing the same structures that perpetuate inequity; they are contributing to a collective vision and expression of a new way forward.
Funders like us should be focused on embracing new connections and networks. When we were standing up our Learning and Evaluation infrastructure at our foundation, we knew our evaluation partners were strong, but the pool wasn’t broad enough. It lacked the lived expertise and cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity reflective of our grantee partners and community. We needed even more partnerships with evaluators who brought a dedication to equitable, culturally relevant evaluation.
We didn’t just want more names on a procurement list or to engage in a tokenistic or performative exercise. We wanted to partner with evaluators whose work could deepen our values and priorities, especially our commitment to dismantling structural racism and supporting equitable economic and social mobility in the communities. Investing in ETB helped us do that.
We applied to be a Practicum Site for the Leaders in Equitable Evaluation and Diversity (LEEAD) program and have served in this role three times (so far!). Scholars’ expertise shaped projects such as a small businesses scan, a staff development session on equitable decision-making, and a refreshed application experience survey. These weren’t transactional projects. Collaboration with the Scholars pushed us, and the ideas they introduced to us lasted beyond the Practicum Site projects. Scholars sometimes ‘stayed with us’ as well by continuing to work on additional evaluation projects.
The Foundation has also participated in ETB Coffee Breaks. These one-on-one conversations build personal connections and real partnerships between our foundation and evaluators. Recently, ETB convened evaluators and funders for community forums in response to social and economic upheaval. These spaces had a clear vision: instead of retreating in the face of defunding and dominance, we resist by believing in the collective and building an evaluation ecosystem that values reciprocal relationships, focuses on care, and emphasizes abundance.
ETB’s learning offerings offer utile and applicable ideas. For example, the CREE Learning Series provided our team with foundational concepts we could apply in our work. A web event about Culturally Responsive Indigenous Evaluation (CRIE) presented by Michelle M. Jacob, PhD (Yakama) of Anahuy Mentoring, LLC introduced concepts based on published work of Indigenous evaluation experts particularly Nicole R. Bowman, PhD and Carolee Dodge-Francis, EdD that our L&E team shared other staff including knowledge and respect for place (very relevant at a community foundation) and the power of the collective. These concepts resonated with our colleagues and help guide our learning practice.
If you’re a funder of evaluation wondering how to support evaluators and create a more connected landscape:
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.