How can learning and evaluation help philanthropy address the challenges of our time?

The Funder & Evaluator Affinity Network (FEAN) was hatched on a sunny afternoon at a beer garden on downtown Oakland’s Telegraph Avenue. As two leaders of evaluation firms dedicated to working with social sector organizations to deepen their impact, we felt frustrated by commonly shared critiques regarding evaluation made by people working in philanthropy. These criticisms often ignored root causes of problems, such as the growing complexity of social change work, who holds purchasing power for evaluation and learning, and market dynamics that impede collaboration.

As we sat and talked, we began to imagine what a concerted and inclusive effort to address these issues might look like. We hypothesized that if funders and evaluation consultants could sit and learn side by side, working together to shift the conditions that get in the way of impactful learning, collectively we could make important progress on long-standing challenges in our field.

Four years later, funders and evaluators have come a long way together in this work. Through FEAN, more than 400 passionate and committed leaders have identified key practice challenges and developed innovative solutions. They have met, collaborated, and produced blogs, briefs, articles, and presentations together. FEAN members have also socialized, deepened relationships, created new connections and partnerships, and identified critical work still to be done. Members met in both good and challenging times to share ideas and support, including some very emotional FEAN coffee chats during the early days of the pandemic.

As FEAN sunsets this fall, we ask ourselves — so what? What impact has FEAN had on its members and the broader field? We recently surveyed members to obtain their perspectives on this question. A majority agree FEAN created space for funders and evaluators to highlight and engage with issues important to our field (72 percent), elevated the importance of equitable evaluation and grantmaking practices (64 percent), and increased motivation to participate in field-building efforts (53 percent).

As we conclude this work, we also ask ourselves — now what? What else is needed to ensure learning and evaluation supports philanthropy in addressing the challenges of our time? As founders of this effort, we offer four of our own reflections on what’s needed to drive even greater impact:

  1. Reconsider philanthropy-centered learning spaces.
  2. Center problem-solving over performance.
  3. Invest in new knowledge infrastructure around evaluation and learning.
  4. Deepen relationships and embrace the messiness.

Read the full article about the Funder & Evaluator Affinity Network by Clare Nolan and Meg Long at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.