Reflecting on two thought-provoking articles from my LinkedIn feed—Brenda Solorzano’s Rigorous Evaluation Versus Trust-Based Learning: Is This a Valid Dichotomy? (highlighted by Catherine Garcia last month) and Lora Smith’s How to Flip the Script on Foundation Reporting—I’m struck by their critiques of the status quo in philanthropic evaluation. Both pieces challenge traditional methods rooted in capitalist ROI frameworks, which often prioritize the perspectives and interests of white people. As Jara Dean-Coffey’s work lays out, these frameworks stem from the practices of wealthy, white male industrialists and reinforce power imbalances, ignoring context and the unpredictable, long-term nature of social change.
Both Solorzano and Smith emphasize that funder accountability is crucial, particularly given the historical origins and ongoing impact of philanthropic wealth amassed at the expense of marginalized communities. NCRP’s Cracks in the Foundation research, led by my colleague Katherine Ponce and funded by iF, A Foundation for Radical Possibility, shows how the wealth fueling philanthropy in the DC area was amassed at the expense of Black residents. Smith highlights a staggering statistic: in 2020, US foundations invested $1.2 trillion in global extractive markets while distributing only $88.6 billion to grantees.
These extractive markets often perpetuate the very harms philanthropy seeks to repair, making it imperative for funders to scrutinize their investments and hold themselves accountable to the communities they serve.
Historically, evaluation practices have often catered to funders rather than the communities and movements they aim to support. This disconnect can skew priorities, fostering compliance over collaboration and sidelining the voices essential for authentic, impactful change. Most funders require grantee reporting as a one-way street, leaving community-based organizations—often with limited resources—struggling to meet these demands.
To shift this dynamic, as evaluators we need to move in alignment with the future we want to live in. A starting point is to ask grantees how funders can be accountable to and better support them. In a previous project, I had the opportunity to work on an evaluation engagement that flipped this script, resulting in meaningful changes in how a foundation approached its grantees. Solorzano discusses similar tools, while Smith highlights the Right Relations Collaborative, led by Indigenous leaders, which encourages funders to reflect on their “money stories” and shift their practices towards equity and justice.
Several equitable evaluation approaches can help subvert dominant power dynamics and prioritize community autonomy. This sampling falls short of a complete offering, but includes:
- The Equitable Evaluation Framework ensures that evaluation practices serve equity by prioritizing multicultural validity, participant ownership, and examining historical and structural factors that contribute to social inequities.
- Made in Africa Evaluation prioritizes Indigenous knowledge and local contexts, promoting evaluation methods that reflect African relational approaches while challenging Western-centric practices.
- Culturally-Responsive and Equitable Evaluation (CREE) integrates diversity, inclusion, and equity throughout evaluation by considering cultural and contextual factors in a participatory process that empowers affected communities and drives meaningful change.
- Quantitative Critical Race Theory equips researchers with critical practices for rethinking data collection and analysis, highlighting biases in numbers and categories, emphasizing diverse voices, and promoting social justice to foster equity.
When employed intentionally, these methods can better prioritize the autonomy of frontline communities and emphasize the importance of critiquing how funding relationships impact movement and program strategies and outcomes. Evaluators must pay attention to power dynamics and advocate for changes where funders yield power to communities, developing learning agendas that focus not only on outcomes but also on the quality of relationships and accountability structures that enable communities and frontline movements to thrive.
Additionally, we often treat funding and evaluation as short-term endeavors that assume a linear path to change. A colleague recently shared a valuable insight he’s learned from our work together: “Change is never A, then B, then C. It’s X, then A (‘F you’), and then 7!” This captures the essence of social change—it’s complex and non-linear. In advocacy work, short-term outcomes frequently fail to reflect the deeper impact of movement-building. Significant victories can take years to materialize, and essential groundwork like base-building often happens beneath the surface.
Focusing solely on immediate outcomes risks undermining long-term strategies for deep, systemic change. Echoing principles rooted in Black feminism, as advocated by adrienne marie brown and others who promote adaptive and emergent strategies, we must recognize that effective evaluation models can embrace complexity and uncertainty. Approaches like developmental evaluation facilitate continuous feedback and learning, ensuring our strategies remain responsive to the evolving landscape of social change. Such evaluations respect the nonlinear paths of progress and can honor the collective wisdom of communities as they navigate challenges and opportunities.
Ultimately, we must rethink our approach to learning and accountability within philanthropy and evaluation. It is essential to shift our focus from short-term outputs to long-term, sustainable change that allows communities to control their own futures. To enact real change, funders should embrace the five-point action plan outlined in Cracks in the Foundation: confront the historical harms associated with their wealth, engage directly with impacted communities, make reparations, decolonize institutional policies and practices, and advocate publicly for broader reparations. As evaluators, especially those of us who have benefited from racial capitalism, we need to align our practices with these transformative changes. While there is no straightforward roadmap for this journey, prioritizing equity and justice in our evaluation efforts will pave the way for a more just and liberated future where communities—not funders—hold the power.
Adrianne Glover (they/she) is a values-driven learning and evaluation strategist with over nine years of experience in culturally responsive and equitable evaluation. Formerly the Evaluation Manager at NCRP, she led the development of strategic learning systems to support the organization’s theory of change. Prior to NCRP, they worked as an evaluation consultant with Creative Research Solutions and various domestic and international nonprofit organizations to foster equitable practices and drive transformative, systemic change. Deeply committed to advocacy, community care, and accountability, she uses data to tell impactful data-driven stories about social movements. Based in the Atlanta metro area on Muscogee (Creek) land, Adrianne enjoys spending time in community through relationships, events, and organizing and connecting with the earth.
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