Evaluation of Capacity Building Introduction

Evaluation of Capacity Building:  Lessons from the Field

by Deborah Linnell

Summary

Table of Contents

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Introduction by Alliance Executive Director

Let’s give credit where credit is due. Since the time I was a “pup” in fundraising, years ago, every set of grantmakers’ guidelines, at least that I can remember, called for a section on “evaluation.” We always had to tag on a paragraph-or-so about our strategy for determining exactly what, “at the end of the day,” we accomplished (or, heaven forbid, what we hadn’t accomplished) with the funders’ money. Usually, we put a paltry sum aside for a consultant to come in, at the very end of the project, to write a report. But the point is that grantmakers for years have been calling for greater emphasis on evaluation.

Fast-forward to our own recent history…

From our very start, five years ago, the Alliance embraced the habit of listening, listening every day, to every person who could inform this organization’s purpose, vitality and future. And, from the very beginning, we heard a call for more information that is thoughtful, practical, raises challenges and offers value-added to the work of capacity building in the nonprofit sector. The paper you are about to read is one amazingly insightful and important response to that clarion call.

We found that our members and potential members seek to stretch, to learn—ultimately to raise the bar on quality and enhance the power of our field. Thus, we are not surprised when what we heard is affirmed time and again: One simply cannot engage in planning without assessment, nor assessment without planning. Assessment and planning are as interrelated as fundraising and budgeting, staffing and programming, oversight and creative leadership (governance), and a host of other interrelated management tasks. We who are the Alliance now understand the impossibility of “separating the dancer from the dance,” and the critical importance, therefore, of bringing together all aspects of capacity building so that each of us, in our own areas of expertise, may benefit from the experiences of the field as a whole.

We have seized the opportunity to start with evaluation in order to learn what could make a difference in both the design and the process of capacity building. With that in mind, we commissioned a study of “the state of evaluation” within the field of nonprofit capacity building in order to understand: 1) the important considerations in evaluating nonprofit capacity-building efforts; and, 2) the major practice lessons learned through evaluations done to date. The study’s results show that evaluation of capacity building is not widespread beyond foundation-sponsored initiatives. In addition, we do not yet have a sufficient pool of professionals, or the necessary benchmarks, to meet even the current demand for such evaluations. Thus, while many capacity builders may agree that evaluation is important in principle, the majority are not yet in a position to put evaluation into practice on a regular basis. We hope that this effort will begin to turn the tide.

We are proud and excited about the thoughtful examination and highly accessible presentation that Deborah Linnell and her associates have produced. Her work provides the practitioner with models and tools for evaluation, as well as “tips” and lessons learned that, we hope, will help more people build evaluation into their regular capacity-building programs. This report enables us to shine a spotlight on a number of projects and practices, many of which are breaking new ground, and all of which offer insights worth communicating to a larger audience.

In the process of absorbing the results of this scan, we as a field of practitioners must identify the overarching issues that deserve greater attention in order to inform the direction of our work. Along with this effort to capture the state of capacity-building evaluation, the Alliance continues to sponsor and support research to map the field of capacity building more precisely and to study the implications of how we define and perform our work.

As we enter a new era, socially, politically and economically, for North America and for the global village, our intention is to strengthen capacity building and seed the field for new possibilities in the years to come. Please let us hear from you.

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