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Profiles from the Field:
The Center for Evaluation Innovation
Why was the Center started?
The last five years have been a tremendous opportunity for creativity and growth in the advocacy evaluation field. This growth has been fueled by pioneering funders, evaluators, and advocates who share a strong dedication to the field and are growing it through collaboration.
While this start-up phase has generated a great deal of momentum, there is much left to do. The field must expand beyond eager innovators and reach out to the much larger majority of individuals and organizations who know little about advocacy evaluation or remain skeptical about its value. In addition, the field must fill in some clear gaps in its infrastructure, particularly in the areas of communications, outreach, and training. Addressing these gaps requires a centralized and coordinated—but still collaborative and not competitive—effort to develop and execute a long-term vision and strategy for advocacy evaluation field building. The Center was created to fill that role.
Is the Center focused only on advocacy evaluation?
No. The Center was formed to help build the field of evaluation in multiple areas that are challenging to measure and where traditional program evaluation approaches are not a good fit. This includes advocacy and policy change efforts, but also includes other areas like systems change and communications. The main Center focus for now, however, is advocacy evaluation.
What does the Center do?
The Center is building the field of evaluation in hard-to-measure areas. This means:
- Conducting new research on emerging evaluation questions or challenges
- Sharing new developments in the field through newsletters, briefs, and other publications
- Developing training curricula and training opportunities
- Convening advocates, evaluators, and funders to discuss field developments
- Referring individuals with questions to helpful resources.
The Center does not do evaluation (does not bid on evaluation contracts). Also, collaboration is a key focus. While the Center is doing some things on its own, most work will be done in partnership with other organizations and individuals. For example, the Center is working now with Innovation Network on a research project to identify rapid response methods that can be used to generate real-time feedback. The Center is also collaborating with other organizations that include Independent Sector, Alliance for Justice, Organizational Research Services, iScale, TCC Group, and others.
Where is the Center located?
The Center is physically located in Washington D.C. Starting in the spring of 2010, the Center will share space with Innovation Network—the Center’s strategic partner and fiscal sponsor—at 1625 K Street NW.
Who works for the Center?
Julia Coffman is Director of the Center for Evaluation Innovation. Because the Center is doing much of its work collaboratively, its staffing is intentionally lean and the Center then works with other organizations and individuals to help carry out its work and mission.
What does the Center have to offer right now?
The Center, in partnership with Innovation Network, is publishing the Advocacy Evaluation Update newsletter quarterly. In addition, the Center currently has two free publications:
- Overview of Current Advocacy Evaluation Practice by Julia Coffman (October 2009) offers an overview of current practice in the new and now rapidly growing field of advocacy evaluation.
- Evaluating Advocacy and Policy Change: The Funder’s Perspective by Barbara Masters (October 2009) describes the key challenges and solutions several foundations have identified from their experiences evaluating their advocacy grantmaking over the past several years. It also offers ten tips for funders on what to communicate to their advocacy and policy grantees about evaluation.
What is ahead in 2010?
The Center has commissioned a series of new briefs on:
- Evaluating Community Organizing
- Measuring Public Will
- Evaluating Coalitions
- Evaluating Networks
- Internal Evaluation
- Strategic Learning and Evaluation
- Building Advocates' Evaluation Capacity
In collaboration with other organizations, the Center is planning training and learning opportunities in the form of webinars, conference calls, and other virtual or in-person meetings. The Center is also organizing presentations at many conferences and convenings in 2010.
The Center will also launch a standalone website in mid-2010 at www.evaluationinnovation.org. Right now, introductory information about the Center can be found here on Innovation Network’s website.
Sign up here for periodic updates about Center developments, publications, and events. Contact Julia Coffman at jcoffman [at] evaluationinnovation [dot] org with any questions about the new Center.
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