This blog shares the thoughts of Jara Dean-Coffey and Bonnie Chiu, two social sector leaders who recently spoke at an NPC and Charities Evaluation Working Group event on rebalancing data for the 21st century. This free event was part of our 2020 annual conference, NPC Ignites. Our speakers discussed their work on trying to shift traditional third sector evaluation and measurement practices towards a more equitable approach.

What needs to change?

Both speakers stressed that for centuries, research and evaluation has been used as a tool for control and oppression. In the social sector, evaluators and funders still act as neutral and objective figures who can determine the validity and worth of programmes without bias.

Jara Dean-Coffey, Director of the Equitable Evaluation Initiative, spoke to us about the need to redress this unequal power dynamic, encouraging us to rethink how evaluation and research can either reinforce inequalities and harmful structures, or seek to address them. Since 2019, over the course of five years, the Equitable Evaluation Initiative is aiming to build a field of practitioners who are committed to embedding the Equitable Evaluation Framework (TM). The Equitable Evaluation Framework (TM) helps to challenge fundamental beliefs about evaluative work, and to realign the design and implementation of evaluations as to reflect evolved definitions of evidence, rigor and validity, embrace complexity and be in service of equity.

Bonnie Chiu is the Managing Director at The Social Investment Consultancy, and an advocate for diversity and inclusion across the social sector. Bonnie spoke about the need to decolonise the measurement and evaluation space, and to reckon with our colonial history as a field.

‘There are so few people of colour working in research and evaluation. It’s not accidental, it’s because there have been so many centuries of how research has been used as a tool of command and control and colonisation, where people of colour are subjects, not at the decision-maker table.’

Read the full article about re-balancing data by Abigail Rose at NPC.