Equitable Evaluation: "Re-imagining a System that is Heavily Ingrained"
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on October 28, 2019
Two foundations, Kresge and the Oregon Community Foundation, that are testing equitable evaluation shared some of their experiences in a recent webinar on advancing equitable evaluation offered by the Associations Advancing Equitable Evaluation Practices.
Kate Seely, Northern California Grantmakers' director of Leadership, Culture, and Community, included some of the lessons learned, while stressing the value of practice, in a recent post:
- Practice: "Kim Leonard, from Oregon Community Foundation, mentioned on the webinar that much of equitable evaluation is an ‘active (read: ongoing) practice.’"
- Purpose and audience: "Part of the active practice of equitable evaluation is consistently asking ourselves the questions 'for what' and 'for whom.' What purpose does our evaluation serve?"
- Time: "Saying that things take time is not just lip service. It actually involves meeting tensions with spaciousness to be able to work through them in a way that opens up more possibilities, letting go of “the way we have always done things” and experimenting with different ways of operating. Time is a resource – adhering to artificial timelines and deadlines may ultimately not allow us to do the work we need to do in those in-between moments."
Image: Gerd Altmann/ Pixabay