Evaluation that shares power with community and holds deepening trust, enhancing justice, and driving decisive action as desired outcomes.
The first step in planning a program or initiative. We’ll help you understand the futures your community desires, what strengths they already have, and what resources and capabilities your program will need to support them.
COE prioritizes community decision-making power before, during and after the evaluation. We support organizations and communities to decide what to measure and how, make sense of data, and act on findings.
For those interested in but not quite ready for COE, we use this structured program to support your team to create the conditions for community ownership before an evaluation begins.
We clarify and document constraints, ethics, and how decision-making authority can realistically be shared.
Outcome:Confidence to share power without risking harm or credibility.
We clarify and document constraints, ethics, and how decision-making authority can realistically be shared.
Outcome:Confidence to share power without risking harm or credibility.
Project teams will need to be able to mobilize 7–13 individuals to lead the evaluation (with significant support from EDS). They will also review and approve key outputs as they would in any evaluation.
After the evaluation, collaborators are expected to track and communicate progress against recommendations. For most teams, this is either an extension of work they already do, or a welcome addition because it promotes transparency and accountability.
Generally, yes. Community-owned evaluation invests more time on the front end to align on questions, decision-making, and safeguards.
We encourage collaborators to plan to contract an evaluator at least two months sooner than they otherwise might. This allows enough time to mobilize people and make safe and informed decisions that pay off throughout and beyond the evaluation.
Evaluations are typically designed within an established budget, based on its scope and location. Our approach shifts how money is spent rather than adding to budgets, so the cost is on par with traditional evaluations.
Regarding compensation for Affected Community members, a just and culturally appropriate compensation model is established before community work begins.
A data governance model is established before data are ever collected. In most cases, raw data are held and managed by EDS to ensure confidentiality and safety, while cleaned or anonymized data may be shared more broadly based on what has been agreed.
We engage in ongoing consent and reciprocity discussions to ensure data use stays aligned with ethical standards and community expectations and customs.
We develop a plan to handle such findings when determining decision rights. Generally, if a harmful finding emerges (e.g., related to misconduct), the project team is notified immediately so as to take appropriate action.
If an uncomfortable finding emerges (e.g., a project had an unintended but manageable consequence), everyone involved in the evaluation will jointly decide how the finding is handled, balancing safety, transparency, and accountability.
The people reasonably connected to your program, such as participants (past, present, or potential), their family and friends, service providers, advocates, and others interested in learning with you.
COE works with any methodology, design, model, or context. Rather than prescribing a particular design, COE focuses on sharing power with communities when determining evaluation priorities.
Guided by a trained evaluator, a COE then uses the approach that best equips everyone to make good decisions and hold those in power accountable.
Nonprofits, social enterprises, and impact investors that want to:
Download our COE Readiness Guide to reflect on your current practices and what it might take to make a community-owned evaluation possible.
View Readiness Guide