Giving Compass' Take:

• Elly Davis explains how foundation evaluation systems can be used to advance equity if implemented properly. 

• How can your evaluation process be improved? 

• Read about how donors can support racial equity. 

1. The equity movement is driving change at foundations.
The number of foundations committing to equity work is growing, and the EEI’s scan of the sector reveals that foundations are using a variety of approaches to advance equity. Some foundations focus their effort and resources on changing their own organizational structures, policies and practices to reflect principles of equity internally. Other foundations re-engineer their external grantmaking efforts to address systemic barriers that create inequity or to promote equity for a specific population. Still other foundations do both.

2. Evaluation is often the last organizational function to be examined through an equity lens.
Unfortunately, common evaluation practices often undermine equity work because evaluation is often the last function to be examined. Over time, the philanthropic sector has developed a set of deeply held beliefs about evaluation that most foundations consider to be “common sense.” The EEI calls these beliefs “orthodoxies.”

3. Evaluation can be used in service of equity.
The EEI’s principles for equitable evaluation begin with the premise that foundations and evaluators have a moral imperative to contribute to equity through evaluative work. More than that, evaluation should make advancing equity one of its aims. It should ask and answer questions about how historic and structural bias have contributed to inequity within the system being evaluated and how a strategy might have different effects on different populations. Finally, evaluative work should be created and deployed in multi-culturally valid and participatory ways.

Read the full article about advancing equity by Elly Davis at PEAK Grantmaking.