Reflections on The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber
Sometimes, evaluation turns into bureaucracy. Reading this book gave me new insights into how and why this happens, and what to do to avoid it.
By Sarah Fielden and Sarah Farina
Following the Evaluation Community Impact Learning Event in Vancouver, two colleagues reflect on their work using "most significant change" as a generative approach and ponder the idea of taking something complex and making it simple.This blog is posted on their behalf.
Building an Evaluation Agenda for the Nonprofit Sector
It is not about gathering more data, it is about more useful information!
Lessons Learned from Evaluating Community Impact Vancouver
The winds of change are blowing. Can you keep up?
Lessons from the SCOPE Initiative
Like childhood obesity, most social problems do not exist in silos. Social issues are created, and solved, by a number of interconnected systems.
Resources for Evaluating Community Impact
Although you can see at the end of a snowstorm everything that has been accomplished, how do you pull out those individual snowflakes, those unique players that made all the difference?
Changing the system requires systems thinking and collective impact although too often we mention the latter without the former. That needs change, too.
A webinar with Tom Kelly
View the webinar with Tom Kelly. From his experience in knowledge, evaluation and learning at various foundations, Tom shares a funder/grant maker point of view, and the I2L2 Framework that can help you measure and communicate your successes to funders.
You will not want to miss it!
"I welcome you to the second-ever Collective Impact Summit. Come and join other social change leaders as we chart a new path for making high-impact, lasting change a reality in our communities."
- Paul Born
If something has been a big part of your learning, I'm sure it will help strengthen many others.
Humble Inquiry challenges us to ask questions in a different way
Asking others for their opinions can change conversations.
Resource Type: Publication | Author: Mark Cabaj
5 Simple Rules for Evaluating Collective Impact explores the challenges evaluators face in developing concepts and methods that are useful for the complex work of community change. Recognizing that Collective Impact has amplifies this challenge, Mark Cabaj recommends 5 simple rules for how to do this.
by Katelyn Mack, FSG
This blog was originally published on FSG's Strategic Evaluation Blog by Katelyn Mack on October 15, 2014. It has been re-posted with permission.
A tsunami of measuring things has hit our community efforts over the past decade. For the most part, this "run it like a business" mantra has done little harm, but it also has not gotten us to the promised land of transformative change.
In social innovation we are at risk of confusing our stories of success for real, genuine impact. Without theories, implementation science or evaluation we risk aspiring to travel to the moon, yet leaving our rockets stuck on the launchpad.
