Beginning in 2015, the Hewlett Foundation has built a grantmaking portfolio around Evidence-Informed Policymaking (EIP), within the broader Gender Equity and Governance Program¹. These grants support institutions with the goal of helping governments — primarily in East and West Africa — to systematically use evidence to improve social and economic policies over time and, in doing so, better respond to the needs of the people they serve.

More specifically, the Hewlett Foundation’s EIP team has focused on supporting grantees executing work in three distinct areas: impact evaluation, data revolution and data governance, and think tanks working to institutionalize and promote evidence use by governments. By focusing in these three areas, the foundation seeks to drive socially beneficial, evidence-informed change at different levels — from the field to specific policies and programs to policymaking systems themselves.

As mentioned back in September, the EIP team is currently in the middle of a year-long strategy refresh process. A direct manifestation of the foundation’s commitment to outcome-focused philanthropy, strategy refreshes are conducted every five years to ensure that work remains current, meaningful, and of high impact. The EIP team has just completed the first of two phases of work — the “look back,” a reflection on what has been accomplished to date through an evaluation of the EIP team’s current grantmaking — and the “look around,” a broad landscape scan to understand current trends in the field of evidence-informed policymaking itself. This work took close to eight months, and the EIP team is very grateful to the many grantees and other stakeholders who shared their time and insights to inform both documents. These two first-phase documents are now available here, and the EIP team invites all interested stakeholders to give them a read. With these two documents complete, the EIP team will now shift into the second phase of work — the “look forward,” or strategy redesign itself.

Read the full article about evidence-informed policymaking by Chris Chibwana, Chris Maloney and Ousseynou Ngom at Hewlett Foundation.