November 5, 2019
We will be gathering in Minneapolis with a community of evaluators from around the world at next week’s American Evaluation Association’s (AEA) Annual Conference. This year’s conference theme, Paths to the Future of Evaluation, offers an opportunity to consider the evolving practice of evaluation and its role in addressing important social issues of our time. At LFA, we regularly reflect on how our practice can push thinking, uplift voices, and build capacity in service of learning and impact. At this year’s conference, you can find us leading three sessions focusing on this theme. Come join us!
In Pursuit of Relentless Learning
Thursday, November 14, 2:45 - 3:30 PM
Emily Drake
Emily Drake, Managing Director, will co-present with Rella Kaplowitz of the Schusterman Foundation on how programs and evaluators can form powerful partnerships to pursue relentless learning. Organizations and programs face an imperative to learn. Now, more than ever, we seek to gather and reflect on feedback, make data-driven decisions, and adapt strategies, all in pursuit of relentless learning. Evaluators play a key role in supporting organizations to achieve their learning and strategy goals. But, as evaluator, how can you start? How can you build a relationship with programs and/or organizations that encourages learning? What questions should evaluators ask? How do you incorporate reflection practices into program or organizational practices? What role does openness to feedback and vulnerability play? Emily and Rella will share their approaches and share tools, tips, and practices that have been successful. Click for more info
A Collaborative Assessment of a Participatory Evaluation: Lessons for Equitable Evaluation
Friday, November 15, 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Jessica Xiomara García
Jessica Xiomara García, Director, and Elba Garcia, Senior Consultant, at LFA will be part of a panel with their partners Leslie Cooksy, Evaluation Director at the Sierra Health Foundation, and José Martinez, Immigration Services Outreach Coordinator at the Education and Leadership Foundation, to discuss their experience and lessons learned from engaging in participatory evaluation (PE), an approach that centers the community’s experience and engagement in the evaluation process.
Elba Garcia
The Center at the Sierra Health Foundation embraced a PE approach in alignment with its mission to advance health and racial equity in California’s San Joaquin Valley – a region with some of the worst health outcomes and highest poverty rates in the state. The panel will address the question of whether this approach was successful in creating a more equitable relation and, if not, how foundations and others can use and support participatory approaches to evaluation more effectively. The panelists will share reflections from three stakeholder perspectives: the funder (Leslie), the funded community partner (Jose), and the consultants providing PE technical assistance (Elba and Jessica). The perspective of the community partner is a highlight of the panel, providing insight into what happens when a seemingly equitable approach to evaluation is required. We will also highlight products from the participatory evaluations and launch the session with a mini data gallery walk.
Click for more info
How Can Internal Advocacy Evaluators Effectively Integrate Learning and Accountability? Shifting the Culture in Advocacy Organizations.
Saturday, November 16, 8:00 - 9:00 AM
Emily Drake will join a panel on how to integrate learning and accountability into advocacy evaluations. Advocacy efforts between multiple organizations have become increasingly common as the nonprofit, public, and private sectors seek to solve deep-seated, structural issues facing our communities. Collaboration is by its nature complex—creating alignment within a single organization is challenging, let alone a combination of organizations with different cultures and missions. Yet, the imperative for organizations to advocate collaboratively to solve challenging issues is not going away. So, how do advocates involved in complex collaborations evaluate their progress and growth? Learning for Action has developed a framework for collaborative performance that is customizable, enables self-diagnosis, and creates a roadmap for identifying and making the changes needed to support strong performance. Emily will introduce the framework, describe the five critical dimensions of collaborative performance (vision, design, governance, learning, and sustainability), and provide an example of how it was successfully used in the context of an advocacy collaborative. Click for more info