|
AEA Conference 2006 |
|
Managing Evaluations to Maximize Utility and Impact Wednesday, November 1, 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM Broadway II
Gale Berkowitz, Teresa Behrens, Peter Bloch Garcia, Astrid Hendricks-Smith, Hanh Cao Yu |
|
Evaluating Foundation Efforts at Policy Change and Advocacy: Frameworks, Tools and Examples Saturday, November 4, 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM Broadway II
Astrid Hendricks-Smith, Kendall Guthrie, Justin Louie, Catherine Crystal Foster, Tom David, Susan Hoeschtetter, Annette Gardner, William Beery, Howard Greenwald, Toni Marzotto, Peter York |
|
As AEA celebrates its 20th anniversary, it seems fitting to think and talk about what the consequences of evaluation have been and what they could be. Evaluations are generally done with the belief, or at least the hope, that they will be beneficial in some way – that they will have desirable consequences. Click here to search for TIG sponsored sessions. |
Consequences of Evaluation |
TIG Sponsored Sessions Highlights |
|
Evaluation in Foundations: A Pacific Northwest Perspective Saturday, November 4, 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM Executive Suite
Victor Kuo, David Landers, Paul Beaudet, Ken Thompson
|
|
CONFERENCE THEME |
|
TIG SESSION |
|
TIG SESSION |
|
2006 Proposal Reviewers—Thank You!
|
|
Lester Baxter Bill Bickel Debbie Bonnet Pauline Brooks Ellie Buteau Stan Capela Lynnette Cook Deena Murphy-Medley |
|
Is it Possible to Bridge Unequal Power Relationships in Evaluation: Lessons From Practice Developing Common Ground Between Funders, Nonprofits and Evaluators Saturday, November 4, 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM Executive Suite
Zoe Clayson, Nuria Ciofalo, Diane Manuel, Liz Schwarte |
|
TIG SESSION |
|
1. Knowledge management. It's big in the foundation world. 2. How to help a board of directors learn about evaluation 3. International focus - sessions about foundations. 4. Sessions about how foundations and nonprofits have shared what they've learned with the field. 5. Accreditation of nonprofits. How do you use the accreditation process as an organizational learning tool? 6. How do you build evaluations in the developing world that are effective for them? 7. Failures and risks: Pratfalls and pitfalls, errors and being OK with it. 8. How one measures the impact of nonprofit work. 9. How one measures the impact of foundations’ work 10. Something with an econometric spin on the above two. 11. Reflections/reports on the United Way’s state affairs since focusing on impact. 12. Gap on the financial ability of nonprofits to manage the money they receive and attain the level of performance that foundations want them to go. 13. The hangover from outcomes-mania 14. Interfacing with foundation staff to help them learn the realities of evaluation, what’s doable and not doable within funding frames. 15. Helping foundations understand what’s realistic about evaluation. 16. Evaluation reporting from the evaluator and foundation’s perspective. 17. How foundations and their grantees use evaluation to experiment with new programs. 18. The use of internal evaluators vs. internal evaluators 19. Evaluating general operating support 20. The implications of foundations pressing for performance on capacity building in nonprofits. 21. Looking at the sustainability of capacity building. 22. Reporting: when an evaluator is hired by a foundation directly vs. when hired by a grantee. 23. Issues involved in taking evaluation reports and condensing/re-writing them for different audiences. Adapting reports for different audiences. 24. Practitioner’s alternative to theory. How much do foundations weigh theory in considering grantee evaluations? 25. How foundations and nonprofits use evaluations more broadly in the context of organizational change. 26. Opening a dialogue between the sectors (foundations and nonprofits) on how we’d like to see evaluation used for learning. 27. What are we doing that is so insular within nonprofits and foundations such that we’re not accessing possible other techniques hat may lie in the corporate or business sector? 28. Readiness for evaluation. How it precedes the change effort. How do you keep evaluation from being marginalized due to lack of readiness? 29. How do you assess the impact of volunteers? 30. Power dynamics between foundations and nonprofits, particularly related to evaluation for learning. 31. What we've learned about place-based or comprehensive community initiatives. 32. And what have we done with that learning? 33. How has it been translated into practice? 34. What’s behind the foundations’ decisions for what they fund for evaluation? 35. How we can learn better from each other, particularly those that can’t come to conferences like this. 36. How do nonprofits guide foundations in their next big investments? What do foundations need to hear? 37. The psychological contract between nonprofits and foundations. What happens if expectations are not met? 38. How to build an appreciation for learning from evaluation. 39. The value of evolution for sustainability for post-funding era 40. What are foundations doing to de-stigmatize evaluation? 41. Drowning in data: how we can get less data and more information. More signal, less noise. 42. Presentation by foundations looking back on 10 years on what has sustained or happened from that project that took place in 90s. 43. A number of foundations have started evaluation departments. Maybe its time for a retrospective on how those offices have faired. 44. Is it often that evaluations you receive lead to the end of the program you are funding? If not, then why does the same program get evaluated year after year when you will fund it anyway and it’s meeting its goals? 45. What roles to foundations play in life support to those who don't need it? 46. What success stories are there about nonprofits coordinating several funders on common outcomes? 47. Is it possible to pool knowledge? 48. Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) - how could there be a more formal relationship between this TIG and GEO? |
|
TIG Session Proposal Ideas for 2007
|