Around the Institute

Breakfast at Aspen: It’s Locally Owned

April 17, 2015  • Institute Contributor

One last reminder. Because we know you need a good breakfast

Local ownership of evaluation sounds great in principle: engaging the supposed beneficiaries of programs in every stage of program development SHOULD include “ownership” of evaluation as well. But it ain’t that simple: join us for our next APEP evaluation breakfast April 23rd at 8:15 AM at One Dupont Circle NW, Suite 700 to hear Carlisle Levine and Laia Grino discuss their InterAction paper on the topic – and how to move from “participant inclusion” to something more meaningful. Leslie Groves, who recently completed a study on feedback mechanisms for DFID, will join via Skype. Sign up here and catch coffee, tea, pastries, and some local (and non-local) evaluation talent.   

 

Collectives that Work Have More Collective Impact, No?

We learn something almost every day from AEA365. (Other days we’re just dumber.) This week, Florent Gomez-Bonnet and Margaret Thomas offered a useful reminder about the value of evaluating partnerships from multiple angles. They highlight tools that can help get a reading on how well partnerships are doing. And if the partnership ain’t workin’, then there’s no reason to expect much collective impact.

 

There’s a Theory about That.

OK- so here’s one more shout-out to AEA365 for some smart thinking about whether and how coalitions benefit from sharing information and knowledge. Using the free TOCO tool to construct a theory of change, Rachel Leventon develops some useful evaluation questions about just how much different coalition members improve by networking and sharing information.