www.fsg-impact.org

Boston Geneva San Francisco Seattle

Trends in Foundation Evaluation

Webinar for Assifero

June 16, 2010

© FSG Social Impact Advisors2

Goals for this Webinar

Goals

• Share three new important trends in evaluation by foundations, especially shared measurement

• Highlight what these trends mean in practice through examples

• Discuss how Assifero members view and use evaluation at their own foundation

3 © FSG Social Impact Advisors

Since Its Inception in 1999, FSG Has Combined Consulting, Thought Leadership and Advocacy to Facilitate Greater Social Impact

Overview of FSG

Sample PublicationsOverview

Functional Expertise

• Strategy and Program Development

• Evaluation

• Organizational Alignment

• Strategy Implementation

Topical Expertise

• Global Development

• Global and US Health

• Youth & Education

• Corporate Social Responsibility

• Environment

• Community-Based Philanthropy

Client Spectrum

Corporations:

Foundations:

Nonprofits:

Government:

4 © FSG Social Impact Advisors

Why Evaluation Matters

“If you look at American foundations as a whole, we gave away something around $40 billion in 2008, which seems like a lot of money in aggregate, but when you compare it to the US government budget and the US GDP, it is really a pittance. If we claim to be a funder whose goal is to produce significant social change, we need to be very strategic. To do that, we need to learn and get better to have more impact.”

Stephen Heintz, CEO, Rockefeller Brothers Fund

5 © FSG Social Impact Advisors

Strategy Evaluation

Increased Social Impact

FSG’s Work Is Based on the Reinforcing Relationship between Strategy and Evaluation with the Goal of Increasing Social Impact

When strategy informs what is evaluated, and evaluation guides the development and refinement of strategy, the potential for social impact increases

Why Evaluation Matters

6 © FSG Social Impact Advisors

Our Evaluation Work is Underpinned by Three Paradigm Shifts in Evaluation

These paradigm shifts are linked and can occur simultaneously

Approach Purpose Scope

Retrospective

Prospective

Judge

Learn

Individual

Shared

Overview of Evaluation Trends

7 © FSG Social Impact Advisors

The Prospective Approach Requires Dynamic, Actionable Evaluation

Prospective ApproachRetrospective Approach

• The retrospective approach is focused on the past

• The goal is typically to prove precisely what the specific impact of a grant / project was through multi-year, academic studies

• This process is expensive and cumbersome for both the foundation and the grantee

• Worse, the results are static, limited, and often come too late to result in any course corrections

• The prospective approach seeks to use evaluation to enable better planning and implementation

• Evaluation takes on several forms and is used for:

– Planning

– ImprovingImplementation

– TrackingProgress

• Methods include:

– Establishing a baseline

– Convening grantees

– Real-time data gathering

– Inclusion of publicly available data and studies

Plannin

g

Implem

entation

Progress

Approach: From Retrospective to Prospective

8 © FSG Social Impact Advisors

Example: Prospective Evaluation

2008 2010 2011 2012 201420132009

Over the next 5 years, Foundation XXX seeks to improve the organizational capacity of out-of-school-time organizations in its city

A critical part of their approach is a dynamic evaluation plan, which will follow the initiative step-by-step and thereby inform the initiative partners and other cities

Research to select partner organizations, determine performance metrics, and establish baseline data

Meetings between Foundation XXX and the evaluator to discuss results

Memos on progress, challenges, insights, etc. for all partners in the initiative

Presentations on results and insights during meetings of all of Foundation XXX‘s grantees

Publically available reports on the intermediate and final results of the initiative, to allow other cities to emulate it

Presentations on insights and results of the initiative during national education conferences

In order to deliver on this evaluation plan a broad range of evaluation approaches will be utilized

Foundation XXXApproach: From Retrospective to Prospective

9 © FSG Social Impact Advisors

Evaluation for Learning Means that Foundations and Grantees Together Answer Specific Learning Questions

Evaluation for LearningEvaluation for Judging

• The focus of traditional evaluation is often on proving to the foundation that the grant or project was a “good investment”

• The grantee would like to position itself for future funding and is therefore keen on being judged as successful by the evaluation

• However, this way both the foundation and the grantee can miss the opportunity to improve their strategies based on the evaluation results

• Imagine instead that foundation and grantee together decide that the grant or project serves the purpose of answering specific learning questions

• Similar to a research experiment, the goal becomes to explore if and how specific approaches or interventions contribute to solving the challenges of that specific program area

• The purpose of evaluation moves from “What exactly did the grant or project result in?” to “Which practical lessons can we derive from this grant or project?”

• This also makes it easier to understand which data / information should be collected

• If the grant or project does not work it is not a failure, rather an opportunity for the foundation and the grantee to refine and improve their strategies

Purpose: From Judging to Learning

10 © FSG Social Impact Advisors

Example: Evaluation for Learning

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation applies “Learning Agendas” to large grants and projects

What is a Learning Agenda?

• When the program areas within the foundation develop five-year strategies, learning agendas are key components

• The learning agenda captures questions and information gaps that could strengthen the strategy because they prove or disprove hypotheses, or provide new insights and approaches for solving a social problem

• The point of the learning agenda is to learn something concrete from every grant or project, and thereby continually improve the foundation’s strategy

What does this mean in practice?

• Every grantee / project partner is allocated specific questions / topics from the learning agenda and is tasked with answering these over the course of the partnership

• It is not about “yes / no” or “success / failure”, but about making sure that through project the foundation improves its knowledge about solutions in that programmatic area

Learning Agenda Excerpt:Post-Secondary Education

for Social Mobility

• How can we leverage generation-specific reliance on technology, such as peer-social networks?

• To what extent will financial instability among our target populations limit the initiative’s effectiveness?

• Will a focus on a single geographic area (a place-based strategy) increase prospects for success?

• What are the barriers and facilitators for taking a model developed in one place and replicating it in others?

Through a learning agenda, every single grant or project can play a critical role in the overall strategy

Purpose: From Judging to Learning

11 © FSG Social Impact Advisors

Shared Evaluation Is About Coordination and Collaboration

Shared EvaluationIndividual Evaluation

• Foundations useindividual indicators and reporting formats

• Grantees and project partners have to conduct a separate evaluation for every one of their funders

• Neither foundations nor grantees can compare results or learn from one another‘s experiences

• The activities of both groups are uncoordinated and aimed at different goals

• Several foundations and grantees agree on shared metrics and evaluation methods in a given thematic program area

• Often, a joint online platform is used to report on results

• Such systems have several advantages:

– Grantees no longer have to track separate metrics for each funder

– Grantees and funders can directly compare results and learn from these

– Coordinating metrics leads to coordinating strategies, which means that resources can be more optimally deployed

• Disparate foundation and grantee activities thereby become a system, which works in harmony in a targeted way to solve social projects

Scope: From Individual to Shared

© FSG Social Impact Advisors12

Shared Measurement Systems Example– Strive

Scope: From Individual to Shared

Background

• Strive is a large-scale partnership initiative in Greater Cincinnati featuring:– An evidence-based organizing framework to address education from

cradle through to career– More than 300 participating organizations with aligned goals and

strategies– A rich learning environment focused on continuous improvement– Strong infrastructure and functional support

• Participants in the Strive partnership include:– Hundreds of education-related nonprofits– The three local public school districts and one diocesan district in

the region– Eight universities and community colleges– Four key local private and corporate funders

© FSG Social Impact Advisors13

Ambito: da individuale a condiviso

Shared Measurement Systems Example– Strive

Common Definition of Success / Overarching Vision and Framework

10 Key Indicators Common Report CardPriority Strategies

14 © FSG Social Impact Advisors

FSG Resources on Evaluationhttp://www.fsg-impact.org/ideas/section/273

Insights from 100 foundations on

prospective evaluation

Ideas and tools to engage your

trustees on the topic of evaluation

Trends and case studies on shared measurement and

evaluation

For follow-up questions, email me anytime at valerie.bockstette@fsg-impact.org

Tools & Resources

15 © FSG Social Impact Advisors

Discussion Questions

• Are you using aspects of prospective, learning-focused, shared evalution?

• What do you see as the advantages of these approaches?

• What do you see as the challenges?

Discussion Questions