evaluation

In 2009, the Hunt Alternatives Fund hired the Leadership Learning Community (LLC) to conduct a retrospective evaluation of its social movement leadership program, Prime Movers. The Fund selects promising national movement leaders and provides them with resources for their personal and professional development, and convenes them in retreats and seminars over multiple years. The Fund decided to undertake an evaluation of the program to inform its decision-­making process about the future of the program, and identify areas of improvement to make it more effective.

We employed a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to explore how to support leadership that expands the scale, reach, and impact of movement work. The evaluation goals included:

• Gather data about the program design and implementation
• Determine the extent to which the Prime Movers program has supported social movement leaders to take a “decisive” step in their development
• Develop benchmarks that the organization may use to assess progress towards national movement leadership

Click here to download the case study read more »

What if we are capable of more, but our low expectations or limiting models of leadership hold us back? Over the past couple of years we have used an Investment Framework tool to understand the types of results or changes that leadership programs hope to achieve. We recently asked a group of funders to identify the results they were targeting (e.g. more financially sustainable organizations, an increased level of personal confidence) and place them in the matrix. Most of their answers fall under the following categories: individual and organization levels – the upper left hand corner of the matrix: read more »

• “Applying a Social Media Rule to Innovation”
  • Author: Jeffrey Phillips
  • Date: June 24, 2010
  • Source: Blogging Innovation
  • URL: http://www.business-strategy-innovation.com/wordpress/2010/06/applying-a...
  • Social Media & Innovation: Jeffrey Phillips identifies two types of communities in the world of social media – “broad and topical”, like Twitter, and “deep and narrow,” like forums. In the sites focused on topical interaction, thousands of participants exchange information that is neither very informative nor very deep, whereas smaller groups of people in a more narrowly-focused discussion generally provide very deep or information-rich resources. This polarization in social media, according to Phillips, aligns very well with all aspects of innovation, but with idea generation in particular. A small, diverse team of several people who are all well-prepared will produce the most radical innovation. As more participants are added, the ideas generated become more incremental rather than disruptive.

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On Community Transformation and Engagement... read more »

• We know that cities and communities are constantly changing and we often attributethe change to economic factors (think Detroit) or specific circumstantial or environmental factors (think New Orleans), but a blog post from nuPolis argues that there are intentional cultural factors that lead a community to change as well.   According to the article there are three dynamics – shared vision and goals, social engagement, and systemic improvement – that, if unleashed, have the potential to fundamentally change a community.  It is by unleashing these cultural components that communities can address issues such as economic capacity, poverty levels, and increased interaction with a larger region.

Top Trends:

On Nonprofit Collaboration...

• The objection to nonprofit collaboration has always been that “we’re all competing for a limited pool of resources.”  This is true, Debra Askanase of the Community Organizer 2.0 blog states, but it is also true that cooperation makes that pool larger; collaboration brings in more traffic, clients and funding sources which benefits nonprofits and their causes.  We are in a new world in which coopetition (cooperative competition) is becoming the norm.

On Evaluation... read more »

• Donors looking to make donations to non-profit organizations have recently been encouraged to look at program evaluation in order to measure the organization’s impact rather than looking at financial ratios.  However, PhilanTopic publishes a post explaining that while it is true that program evaluation is important, financial evaluation is important as well.  An organization’s financial stability, its ability to service any debt it has and how much money it has raised in excess of expenses can be learned from financial evaluation; all of these should be important factors for donors when deciding which organization they would like to donate to.

Top Trends:

On Evaluation... read more »

• There has been a debate recently about whether it is more effective to evaluate non-profit organizations on an individual basis or whether it is better to evaluate overall community impact (meaning the measurement would reflect the work of multiple nonprofits, community organizations, etc.).  There is a general consensus that while measuring overall community impact is more important, it is also more difficult to measure.  In her blog, Heather Carpenter  adds that when researches and consultants study evaluation and impact within nonprofits, it is important that they use evaluation tools that the nonprofits can use themselves.  This, she says, is the first step to conducting larger, community-wide impact studies.

At a recent Bay Area Learning Circle facilitated by Claire Reinelt, LLC’s Evaluation and Research Director, we convened a group of local LLC members to discuss some of the challenges and successes they have seen in their areas of work, in relationship to collective and networked leadership.  As I listened closely to the participants, I was struck by the various struggles they face, particularly around defining and articulating ‘successes’, and evaluating the impact of their efforts – not only to respond to funders’ demands but also to internal demands. read more »

Top Trends:

On Social Impact and Investment... read more »

• A new initiative, Social Impact Exchange, from Growth Philanthropy Network and Duke University has been launched.  Social Impact Exchange is a “focal point for studying, funding and implementing large expansions of proven social purpose organizations.”  It offers an “investment clearinghouse” of the most effective nonprofit organizations.  Sean Stannard-Stockton, of Tactical Philanthropy, comments on the Clearinghouse and how it is similar to the stock exchange; the most relevant aspect of the stock market which also applies to philanthropy, he says, is that the stock market has certain ongoing requirements that organizations must adhere to.

The Leadership Development Investment Framework is a tool developed to assist funders, program staff, and evaluators clarify the purposes of leadership development and capacity-building supports. In 2008, we partnered with United Way Toronto to adapt the original Leadership Development Investment Framework that was produced by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations in 2005.  The tool was useful in assisting the United Way and other leadership funders in Canada to become more intentional about where they are currently investing resources, where there are gaps in investment, and how they might work together to maximize the impact of their resources. Grady McGonagill adapted the framework further by adding the dimension of teams and team building capacity as part of a study for the Bertelsmann Foundation.

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