A report written by Elizabeth Heid Thompson and Patricia Patrizi (and currently available on the CEP website) explores the extent to which foundations evaluate the results of their work. An examination of 31 foundations that have demonstrated a commitment to evaluation over time highlights several key facts.
According to the report, published for the Evaluation Roundtable, funding to support evaluative activities has decreased despite an increase in the demand for the information those activities produce. The number of foundation staff devoted to these activities has also declined in recent years.
Much of the current investment in evaluation is focused on performance metrics, often administrative metrics, rather than on the measurement of the strategy behind the work or on the implementation process. In fact, many evaluation leaders raised the following concerns about the metrics used:
- That the metrics they were tracking did not adequately align with their strategies;
- That their investments did not make a difference in moving the needle; and
- That metrics chosen often reflect goals too distant to inform the way a strategy is implemented.
The good news discovered in this research, which took place in 2009, was about the role of foundation CEOs in the evaluation process. They report that when the evaluation unit reports to the CEO, more financial resources will be provided, the evaluations will be more widely distributed and more attention will be paid to the findings.
