Innovation Network provides evaluation trainings, webinars, and other presentations. We often share resources and materials from those presentations in our newsletters.
The Point K Update is our current newsletter. Transforming Evaluation was our newsletter between 2005 and 2007.
The Advocacy Evaluation Update ("AEU") is for people who are working to influence decision makers, and looking for a way to measure their success. Innovation Network handed over the editorial reins of this newsletter to the Center for Evaluation Innovation in October 2009. Learn more and subscribe at the Center's website.
Want to launch an evaluation, but not sure where to start? In this newsletter, we announced an upcoming webinar, "Terms, Tips, and Trends: Evaluation Essentials for Nonprofits." Johanna Morariu and Ann Emery led the webinar, which covered key evaluation concepts, approaches, and methods.
If you'd like to learn about future webinars from Innovation Network, please visit innonet.org/events.
In June 2013, Johanna Morariu and Will Fenn led a webinar titlled "Nine Steps to Advocacy Evaluation" with the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. We also recapped Veena Pankaj and Kat Athanasiades' presentation, "Evaluation: Finding a Common Ground" at the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers.
If you'd like to view materials from our webinars and conference presentations, please visit the Where We've Been page.
In this newsletter, we announced our newest offering, Ask an Evaluator sessions for nonprofit leaders. We shared our latest blog posts for Markets for Good, Visualising Data, and Beth Kanter, and we shared materials from conference presentations at The California Wellness Foundation's Organizational Learning and Evaluation Conference, the Nonprofit Technology Network's conference, and the American Evaluation Association's conference, as well as links to recent brown bags for the Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, the Friday Forum at American University, and the Washington Evaluators.
We announced the release of State of Evaluation 2012, our latest research and nonprofit evaluation capacity and practice. We shared links to additional reports and white papers, such as our Grantmaker Evaluation Tear Sheets and our new report about strategic learning. We also shared links to video recordings of our latest webinars, Portfolio evaluation vs. Grant Evaluation and Lessons Community and Smaller Foundations can Learn from the Evaluation Practices of Large Foundations. Finally, we shared our latest videos, podcasts, and other multimedia: our two-part podcast series about using data visualization for evaluation and a recording of Johanna Morariu's data visualization presentation at the Nonprofit Technology Network's annual conference.
This newletters highlighted the release of two new Innovation Network white papers, Participatory Analysis: Expanding Stakeholder Involvement in Evaluation and Evaluation Capacity Building: Funder Initiatives to Strengthen Grantee Evaluation Capacity & Practice. We also shared the newest additions to the Point K Resource Library, such as a needs assessment, a cheat sheet for assessing a theory of change, and a detailed guide to engaging stakeholders in the development of evaluation questions. Finally, we linked to several recordings of our recent presentations at the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) Learning Conference.
In this newsletter, we highlighted new evaluation resources in Point K. The new items include a data collection instrument for observing out-of-school time; a metrics manual for public health issues; and a newly-revised version of Innovation Network's Logic Model Workbook.
Lily Zandniapour and Kathy Brennan from Innovation Network explore what it means to be methodologically rigorous in the ?eld of advocacy evaluation. Laura Ostenso from Innovation Network spoke with Dr. Paul Zeitz, executive director and co-founder of the Global AIDS Alliance (GAA), about the evaluation of the Campaign to End Pediatric HIV/AIDS (CEPA). Finally, Moria Cappio and Melanie Reyes from the Children’s Aid Society share how using an advocacy evaluation planning tool helped them reinvent family engagement strategies in their East Harlem Early Head Start/Head Start program.
Jeremy Shiffman presented a framework that helps to explain why some issues receive political attention and support while others do not. Catherine Crystal Foster and Justin Louie offered their perspective on what is unique about community organizing compared to policy advocacy, and the components that should be considered when evaluating organizing work. Finally, Myia Welsh of Innovation Network interviewed social scientist and facilitator Eva Schiffer about a network mapping approach that she developed called Net-Map.
Rhonda Schlangen discussed the role of advocacy evaluation in developing countries based on her own experiences working on reproductive health and rights advocacy in Nigeria and Kenya. Andy Stamp of Innovation Network and Julia Coffman of the Center for Evaluation Innovation offer an overview of system mapping, a method for illustrating complex systems and relationships. We also profiled the Center for Evaluation Innovation and discussed two new resources.
Simon Starling from Oxfam Great Britain shared lessons from monitoring and evaluating advocacy. For example, he described the Climate Change Campaign logic model that was developed for a campaign. While this process was complex, the final product was an effective communication and planning tool. We also profiled the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California San Francisco, shared four new resources, and shined a spotlight on several upcoming conference presentations.
This newsletter highlighted fresh resources about advocacy evaluation, including Pathways for Change, Ten Considerations for Advocacy Evaluation Planning, What Makes an Effective Organization, and Resources for Evaluating Community Organizing (RECO). Julia Coffman shared highlights from the Impact Evaluation Conference in Cairo, such as John Mayne's presentation about contribution analysis and Jess Dart's presentation about participatory performance story reporting.
We summarized a major advocacy evaluation field convening, the Advocacy Evaluation Advances in Los Angeles, California. More than 120 advocates came together to talk about recent learnings from fieldwork, exchange ideas, and identify areas for additional field-building and strengthening. We also highlighted recent conference presentations about advocacy and policy change evaluation from the American Evaluation Association's annual conference, discussed an upcoming issue of the Foundation Review that will focus on advocacy and policy change, and shared slides and handouts from our recent presentations.
In this newsletter, we highlighted Innovation Network's recent report, Speaking for Themselves: Advocates' Perspectives on Evaluation. This report gives you a better understanding of advocates' views on evaluation, the advocacy strategies and capacities they find effective, and the practices used to evaluate advocacy work. More than 200 nonprofit advocacy staff responded to the survey from which the publication draws its data. The report offers numerous recommendations based on Innovation Network’s research for advocates, funders, and evaluators. We also discussed Investing in Change, the first in the "Atlantic Reports" series, which focuses on the practice of grantmaking in support of advocacy. The report explains why The Atlantic Philanthropies and other funders are committed to advocacy as a valuable strategy to advance social change.
We interviewed advocacy evaluation leaders from the American Evaluation Association. Last year, for the first time, those interested in evaluation of advocacy formally had a home at the American Evaluation Association’s (“AEA”) annual conference. The Advocacy and Policy Change Topical Interest Group (or "TIG") was formed in 2007. AEA TIGs are defined around a special topic of interest to subgroups of AEA members. We also shared resources from advocacy evaluation presentations at the AEA 2007 annual conference, such as Ehren Reed's presentation titled "Lessons Learned: Wrapping up Our Evaluation of an Advocacy Campaign."
In our June 2007 issue, we reported on a joint effort to develop a "Composite Logic Model" for advocacy evaluation. The results of the effort are now available. The Composite Logic Model (“CLM”) is now available as a collection of informative documents and as a flexible online tool. In this newsletter, we also shared new tools from Alliance for Justice, a survey in support of Innovation Network's advocacy evaluation research, and interviews with Tom Kelly (on the Annie E. Casey Foundation's results-based approach) and Rhonda Schlangen (on Planned Parenthood's monitoring and evaluation efforts).
Transforming Evaluation: Volume 2, Number 2 (June 2007)
Nonprofit organizations aren’t in business to make a profit; instead, most nonprofits are in the business of creating social change. In this newsletter, Veena Pankaj shared lessons from evaluating nonprofit organizations. For example, in order for social change to be accurately measured, we have learned that grantmakers need to provide resources to cover not only specific interventions (i.e., programs and initiatives) but also the grantees' operational needs. Jennifer Bagnell Stuart and Dahna Goldstein summarized a recent Innovation Network report titled "Can We Talk?" which was featured in the Journal of Information Technology in Social Change.
March 2007 marked the debut issue of the Advocacy Evaluation Update! We included a work-in-progress report on the Advocacy Composite Logic Model and an overview of advocacy evaluation models and thinking. We also interviewed Jagabandhu Acharya about the evolution of Oxfam's advocacy evaluation framework. He described how Oxfam has had a paradigm shift in how they view and design their program work. The new framework values partnerships with other organizations at multiple levels and recognizes that advocacy work is often long-term. Finally, we interviewed Gara LaMarche about the evaluation of immigration reform advocacy.
Transforming Evaluation: Volume 2, Number 1 (January 2007)
At the heart of everything Innovation Network does is the desire to improve nonprofit results by developing the assessment skills of nonprofit staff. While all projects involve some degree of evaluation capacity building, a limited number of projects allow Innovation Network to exclusively focus on improving nonprofit evaluation capacity over an extended period of time. In this newsletter, we were pleased to announce a new partnership with Capital One as part of its Partners in Excellence program to build the capacity of 12 grantees based in the Washington, D.C. region to conduct evaluations and to use evaluation results. We also celebrated Innovation Network's 15th anniversary.
Transforming Evaluation: Volume 1, Number 4 (October 2006)
Ehren Reed described the evaluation of the California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative, a project for The California Endowment that advocates on behalf of low-income immigrants in California. Sharon Grevious described a project with the Center for Leadership Initiatives, in which Sharon designed a unique and prestigious post-collegiate fellowship program for students and young professionals to engage them as future leaders in the Jewish community.
Transforming Evaluation: Volume 1, Number 3 (July 2006)
In our July 2006 edition of Transforming Evaluation, Innovation Network shared tips on setting realistic outcomes; the benefits of organizational information sharing; and how a qualitative evaluation helped one of our clients tell its story. We also described our work with The Healing Zone, a three-year, faith-based community health leadership pilot program of the National Caucus and Center on Blank Aged (NCBA).
Transforming Evaluation: Volume 1, Number 2 (November 2005)
Defining outcomes is key to any evaluation undertaking, and it's a challenge. But what if you need to develop common outcomes across multiple programs, run by different organizations? In this newsletter, Innovation Network shared tips on outcomes alignment. We also shared cultural competency tools and tips on securing stakeholder buy-in before, during, and after the evaluation.
Transforming Evaluation: Volume 1, Number 1 (August 2005)
Welcome to the first issue of Transforming Evaluation, Innovation Network's new quarterly newsletter. Transforming Evaluation will feature timely articles, fresh perspectives, profiles of relevant resources, and practical tips to help organizations engage in meaningful evaluation. We hope that you find this newsletter useful, and will share it with your friends and colleagues. In this debut issue, we dispelled common evaluation myths. For example, we explained how evaluation is systematic, and can be done by anyone (not just experts). Do-it-yourself tools, like our Logic Model Builder at the Point K Learning Center, are available to walk you through the evaluation process.
Learn more about our upcoming presentations at the Where We'll Be page and check out resources from our past presentations at the Where We've Been page.
Contact us if you have questions about our newsletters, resources, or consulting services.
