Date: Friday, September 18, 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.
We are Ava Yang-Lewis, Founder/Principal of ACT Research, and Dana Jensen, Program Director at the Carlson Family Foundation. Over the past several years, we have partnered to build and integrate an equitable evaluation approach into the Foundation’s grantmaking. Sharing learning is one of our values. While we have not systematically studied this approach (it might be in our future!), we’re writing this post to share a handful of learning and evaluation practices that have strengthened our grantmaking and made it more meaningful and impactful.
As we’ve reflected on our work, we’ve begun noticing a set of practices that align with what is emerging as a trust-based approach to learning and evaluation. The idea is simple: learning and evaluation work best when they are part of grantmaking, not apart from it. When embedded throughout the grantmaking process, they strengthen strategy, deepen relationships, and help foundations and grantees learn, adapt, and amplify their impact together. This is how we put equity in practice: centering relationships, sharing learning, and focusing on partnership rather than transactions, extraction, and static grant reporting requirements.
1. Stronger strategies emerge when they’re built with the people closest to the work. Strategies are stronger when grantees and partners help shape them. The people closest to the work see needs and opportunities before funders do. Bringing those perspectives into strategy development and review helps test assumptions, adapt as the work evolves, and put equity into practice.
2. Shared outcomes create alignment without requiring a one-size-fits-all approach to measurement. Co-creating broad portfolio outcomes with grantees gives organizations the flexibility to measure progress in ways that fit their context. Shared outcomes create consistency to learn across a portfolio while giving organizations the flexibility to measure progress in ways that fit their communities and contexts. That’s equity in practice.
3. Invest beyond the grant to strengthen learning and impact. Social impact is rarely achieved through grant dollars alone. Foundations can amplify impact by creating opportunities for organizations to learn from one another and strengthen their learning and evaluation capacity. Opportunities we have implemented and found valuable include convenings, communities of practice, evaluation peer learning workshops, 1:1 learning and evaluation support, and other learning opportunities. That’s equity in practice because it builds stronger and more meaningful relationships, capacity, and learning that extends well beyond a grant.
4. Design reporting with grantees, not for them. We’ve found reporting works best when it’s designed with grantees, not for them. It should reflect shared learning priorities while giving organizations flexibility to report what they already know and measure, rather than asking them to collect new data for reporting. Grantees have told us this reduces reporting burdens! More importantly, it shifts reporting from a compliance exercise to part of the learning process, where the information is used to understand and strengthen the portfolio. It helps foundations identify opportunities to support organizations beyond grant dollars (see #3), while showing grantees that what they report is valued and used.
As we’ve reflected on nearly five years of working together, we’ve begun noticing a coherent set of practices that reflect what we see as a trust-based approach to learning and evaluation – an emerging approach rooted in Trust-Based Philanthropy and equitable evaluation, including the Equitable Evaluation Framework. We think our experience contributes to that conversation by illustrating what this approach can look like when learning and evaluation are intentionally integrated into grantmaking. We look forward to continuing to learn alongside grantee partners and the broader evaluation and philanthropic communities as we continue exploring these ideas!
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