Can a Small Group Make Decisions for an Entire Community?

In previous posts, we've talked about the difference between inclusion and power, and that while participatory evaluation addresses the exclusion problem, community ownership addresses the power problem.

However, even community-owned approaches may still need to rely on relatively small groups of people making decisions on behalf of thousands.

What could go wrong?

Where things fall apart

Even with the best intentions, participatory or poorly implemented community-owned approaches can replicate traditional power structures. Community decision-making could be nominal. People could be unfairly expected to represent the views, struggles, and aspirations of a large or diverse group. Power dynamics at play in society at large can creep into evaluation decision-making. Unclear governance models can create confusion and rework. Poorly thought-out compensation structures could leave people feeling exploited and undervalued.

Deliberate design is required to avoid or mitigate these challenges so that Affected Community members - the people impacted by a program, whether or not they directly participate - can look back on their experience and feel a sense of ownership, while still yielding findings that organizations and communities can use to improve.

The question, then, is how do we facilitate community ownership when we can't engage everyone in a community without it becoming symbolic or tokenistic?

Assume potential

The real work starts before evaluations begin: by assuming people will enter the process with good intentions and a willingness to listen and learn, while using our expertise as evaluators to build guardrails that protect everyone's safety and the quality of the evaluation.

Evaluation requires expertise, some of which undoubtedly comes from trained evaluators, but we should not neglect the expertise that comes from holding traditions, norms, sovereignty, and lived experience.

In my experience supporting community-led approaches, I have consistently worked with non-specialists who were competent, trainable, interested, receptive to reason, and engaged when provided the necessary space and resources.

This doesn't mean there were no challenges, disagreements, or instances of arrogance or stubbornness. In fact, it's completely unreasonable to expect any two people to agree on everything, let alone a group of people. When challenges emerged, however, they were navigated through clear communication, reasoning, and conflict resolution structures established and agreed upon before the work began.

Establish Clear Guardrails

Community ownership deals with decision-making power. To contextualize this, I like to draw connections to politics. Heads of state have considerable power, but they act within the confines of constitutions, separations of power, and checks and balances. Decision-making authority does not mean free rein.

Similarly, community-owned evaluation exists within the confines of evaluation best practices, ethics, and known constraints like budgets, local laws, customs, and traditions. Our role as evaluators does not vanish; it expands to include facilitator, negotiator, confidant, advocate, and steward so that community expertise and ownership can thrive.

Each community-owned evaluation starts by clearly outlining the types of decisions communities can reasonably and safely make, transparently communicating this to community members, allowing them to ask questions, challenge, offer alternatives, and together develop a workable decision-making model. Compensation for community members is established here as part of the governance design, not as an afterthought.

Govern, Don't statistically Represent

Programs and their evaluations typically cover large and diverse populations. Very few evaluations can reasonably engage every one of these individuals. Therefore, in most cases, community-owned evaluation requires supporting a smaller group to make decisions on behalf of others.

The people making decisions in a community-owned evaluation aren't statistical representatives, but governors. This role comes with responsibilities: transparency about who they are and aren't, structures that keep them accountable, and mechanisms for other members of the Affected Community to weigh in over time.

Our approach relies on rigorously assembling a diverse group of members from the Affected Community, program participants, service users, advocates, and partners who, in as many ways as possible, reflect the diverse interests and perspectives of the people affected by the work.

Careful attention is paid to power dynamics, historic and contemporary grievances, and justice as an outcome. Singleton identity seats are avoided, and diversity is captured across and within key segments of society. This includes socio-economic status, program proximity, ethnicity, religion, authority, and other areas as necessary for the evaluation to promote justice. Active efforts are made to include people who are traditionally excluded from decision-making roles, so that the evaluation doesn't simply reproduce the same voices, priorities, and shortfalls.

With everyone in place, clear governance scaffolding is established, outlining decision-making roles and responsibilities, decision closure rules, how disagreements will be negotiated, and whether and how amendments can be made.

Incorporate Diverse Perspectives and Touchpoints

Community means community. While it isn't always reasonable or possible to directly engage all members of a community in an evaluation, considerable efforts can and should be made to engage numerous touchpoints across the Affected Community.

Governors have constituents who inform their decisions. Our approach allows community members who make decisions to consult traditional leaders, ancestors, and others they trust. EDS also builds Issue-Area Networks, a constellation of organizations, service users, and advocates across numerous issue areas who may be consulted to provide rapid feedback as the evaluation progresses. This allows those directly involved in decision-making to have the confidence they need to proceed, for example, by validating that their conclusions are actionable and reasonable before they are finalized.

If you want to be a part of how this works - whether as an organization, a funder, or a community member who wants power at the table, we'd love to hear from you.