As practitioners of the Equitable Evaluation Framework, we are committed to putting the people we are here to serve at the center of our work. We view evaluation as a tool for advancing justice and liberation — and we also acknowledge that this work is hard, messy, and imperfect. Here are some ways we’ve fostered more equitable approaches to evaluation.

A Framework for Equitable Learning and Evaluation

Across our organizations, the issues we tackle are the result of deep-rooted, systemic issues: gender and economic biases and racism. Our strategy is to effect systems change by addressing these root causes.

The pathways between actions and outcomes for these pervasive and highly complex issues are long, convoluted, and involve countless systems, organizations, and actors. The ultimate indicators of success — including equalizing health outcomes across all population groups — will emerge over many years.

Evaluation and learning helps provide information and data that are essential to strategic thinking, and evaluation produces learning, stories, information, and understanding to support grantee empowerment and sustainability and foundation and grantee decision-making. It can also help build knowledge and evidence for the field. Evaluation and learning address critical questions, including:

  • To what extent and in what ways are we living into our values and fulfilling our missions?
  • How can we enhance our influence and impact?
  • How can we center grantee voice and community voice in learning that is meaningful and useful to partners?

In our evaluation and learning practice, we also want to ensure that we’re not inadvertently contributing to the root causes we want to change. Evaluation and learning must be in service of and contribute to equity, yielding both more meaningful and relevant insights and information and greater equity — in our practices, community partners, and the questions we ask. Evaluation can have a powerful role in ensuring that individuals and communities both share equitably in the knowledge, wealth, and resources of society and contribute to their creation.

Read the full article about equitable evaluation by
Ana Jackson, Ph.D., Jessica Mindnich, Ph.D., and Sonia Moldovan at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.