Presented at the American Evaluation Association November 2010 Thinking Outside of the Evaluation Report Box: Creating a Structural Change Grantmaking Resource Guide Presented at the American Evaluation Association November 2010

Common Vision: The Idea Establish and convene 2 regionally-based funder learning cohorts New England and Midwest Document and model best structural change grantmaking practices for creating “healthy communities with widespread equity for all” Allow grantmakers to set the agenda and develop the process Provide $100,000 to each cohort for grantmaking to test their work

Why Do It? Conceived in response to a series of events and conversations taking place in philanthropy Breaking down grantmaking silos Lack of a shared understanding of concepts such as social justice Lack of documentation about the practice of social justice philanthropy The growing demand for metrics being made by grantmakers to their grantees

You Might Be Wondering… Why “healthy communities with widespread equity?” How did we get from healthy communities to structural change? Why would an LGBTQ organization do a project with no clear, specific LGBTQ focus?

Common Vision Process Foundations commit to a minimum of 6 two-day meetings over two years Incorporated evaluation into the process from the beginning Ensure “real-time” response and recalibration To be a resource to the cohorts as they thought about evaluation as a part of their grantmaking process Tightly wove evaluation, facilitation and program staff to ensure incorporation of evaluation learnings into the work

Common Vision Process Structure the meetings to correspond to the process of grantmaking STEP1: Understanding Structural Change STEP 2: Framing Your Issue Through a Structural Change Lens STEP 3: Mapping the Field: Identify Goals, Evidence of Impact and Key Players Picking a Strategy to Fund STEP 4: Developing and Disseminating Your RFP STEP 5: Evaluating Proposals STEP 6:

Process: What Worked Applying knowledge of what works in building communities of practice among grantmakers And, every group is different, design had to be flexible Creating a sense of shared accountability for the group process Engaging participants in shifts in the agenda Testing out approaches and tools, and then soliciting feedback from participants in real-time

Process: What Worked Designing, administering and using the findings from convening assessments to understand participant experience and to inform design Balancing integration of content experts with experiential learning and practice sessions Having a combination of content, design and evaluation skills as part of the team

Process: Lessons Learned Clarity about the nature of the “journey” Maybe less frustration, more consistent engagement Help individuals and organizations to determine earlier on if they were able to/or wanted to participate Better understanding of prior grantmaking experience and knowledge of participants Extended the timeframes for some parts of the work

Process: Lessons Learned Clearly define roles and decision-making authority People approach this work from a deep and personal space Requires “care and feeding” that needs to be considered and tended to through the process Formative evaluation notes should capture detailed mid-stream changes to process

The Role of Evaluation Evaluators as participant observers at all convenings Led participants through a Theory of Change process in one of first convenings Aimed to “abstract” the cohort experience to best hone the frameworks, articulate the process, have examples of best practices and red flags

The Resource Guide Grounded in the Common Vision experience Each section provides insights from the Common Vision experience, tools, and examples Includes evaluation planning tools for grantees, annotated bibliography, and glossary of key terms

The Resource Guide STEP1: Understanding Structural Change STEP 2: Framing Your Issue Through a Structural Change Lens STEP 3: Mapping the Field: Identify Goals, Evidence of Impact and Key Players Picking a Strategy to Fund STEP 4: Developing and Disseminating Your RFP STEP 5: Evaluating Proposals STEP 6: To access the Guide to Structural Change Grantmaking: Resources, Tools and Lessons Learned from Common Vision go to www.lgbtfunders.org.

Questions? Karen Zelermyer, President and CEO Funders for LGBTQ Issues Karen@lgbtfunders.org Jara Dean-Coffey, Founder and Principal jdcPartnerships Jara@jdcPartnerships.com Steven LaFrance, Founder and Principal LFA Group: Learning for Action Steven@LFAgroup.com