A sunflower plant grows with other plants and supports in a community garden
(I wrote this for the American Evaluation Association’s AEA365 site during a special Organizational Learning-Evaluation Capacity Building week in April 2023).
Hi, I am Gretchen Biesecker, Principal Consultant with Bee’s Knees Consulting LLC in Somerville, MA. A large part of my practice focuses on evaluation capacity-building with nonprofits small and large, including AmeriCorps programs across the U.S. AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps is a federal agency that “brings people together to tackle the country’s most pressing challenges through national service and volunteering.” Through a national network, AmeriCorps enrolls 200,000 Americans each year to meet critical needs in education, the environment, disaster services, public health, among others.
Sometimes my capacity-building work can get pretty meta! For instance, my colleague, Marc Bolan and I conducted a randomized control trial of an AmeriCorps program’s efforts to build evaluation capacity among organizations hosting their AmeriCorps members. The goal of the study was to measure the program’s impact on participants’ knowledge, attitude, and confidence relating to evaluation, and their capacity to carry out evaluation and performance measurement activities.
More commonly, over the past 7 years, I’ve worked with AmeriCorps programs and their state commissions to build their knowledge, understanding, confidence, and use of evaluation and data. I conduct trainings in person and via Zoom and offer office hours or individual coaching sessions. I also lead cohorts of 4-6 programs who want to improve how they collect or use data, articulate research questions and ideas for evaluation studies, or better put results into action.
Lessons Learned
• Evaluators need to develop better tools and approaches to measure the outcomes of our capacity-building work across a range of programs and settings. Few tools exist, and those that do can be too long and full of jargon to work well among nonprofits.
• Too often, evaluation capacity-building focuses on deficits, rather than capacities and assets that already exist. I see this when I look at survey tools and assessments designed to measure capacity-building, when I review evaluation training materials, and when program staff share past experiences with me. I’ve seen assessments that yield scores based on the absence of capacities. Not only can this approach feel demoralizing to programs, but it flies in the face of the very name—capacity-building!
Instead, I find that most programs and their staff want to learn and improve in their work, and they believe in evaluation. Their lack of capacity is not rooted in a lack of interest—it’s stalled by a lack of time, positive experiences, resources, and funding. When we start by focusing on capacities that programs identify and want to work on, ask about their assets and build on them, and create dedicated time and space, we see success.
Hot Tips
• Appreciative inquiry, an approach that focuses on strengths, works well in evaluation capacity-building. Asking questions and focusing on tiny and bold steps that could lead to improvements, creates excitement, confidence, and positive momentum.
• Building evaluation capacity takes time and money, or in other words… CAPACITIES! We need more foundations and funders to pay for this work. When evaluators take the time to deeply understand the programs they serve, and programs can get work done within the learning experience (e.g., writing an evaluation plan as part of a cohort experience), capacity grows.
• A combination of small group and 1:1 work with programs can be powerful. Individual, 1:1 time allows programs to ask specific questions and reflect on their unique challenges, strengths, and plans. Small group time helps peers learn and share ideas and realize that many evaluation-related challenges and ideas affect us all.