Victor Kuo American Evaluation Association October 29 2005

Victor Kuo American Evaluation Association October 29, 2005

Evaluation Challenges in a Young, Strategic, and Ambitious Foundation: The Gates Foundation 2000 -2005(? )

Rapid Evolution within a strategic foundation Changing TOA From transparency to advocacy

Repudiation of old TOA and grants before evaluation results are in Loss of interest in the metrics Loss of interest in the implementation findings Growing sense of irrelevance (and some embarrassment)

Rapid staffing growth and change in staff profile From educators to MBAs Common evaluation language, different paradigms Data, data

Ongoing tensions: wanting it all Internal vs external audiences Rigor vs speed & adaptability Data hunger vs data aversion

Key Takeaways: Challenge of evaluating ambitious, complex, work requiring long time lines in org that's rapidly evolving Data challenges Competing evaluation paradigms

Victor Kuo Philanthropy Northwest Annual Conference September 11, 2005

Evaluation Challenges: Evaluation In Foundation Contexts

Context: Formalized evaluation function growing, but relatively new among West Coast foundations. Recent past: results, returns, & responsibility. Evaluation remains a discretionary activity for foundations.

Why foundations evaluate. Context and culture matter. External pressures shifting. Internal pressures, also dynamic: Accountability Program improvement Knowledge generation Example.

How foundations evaluate. Foundation and grantmaking structure matter. Size The focus of evaluation Grants, Initiatives, the Foundation as a whole Strategies Geographies Populations

Challenges External and internal pressures shape evaluation activities. Challenges arise from why must evaluation be done as well as how it should be done. The technical coupled with organizational context.

Looking Forward… PNW funders develop communal pressure to evaluate. Develop cases. Identify best practices and standards for foundation use of evaluation. Profession/alism?