Initiatives
FSG ... Next Generation Evaluation

Next Generation Evaluation: Embracing Complexity, Connectivity, and Change

Burgess COMMENTARY
This is a comment I have made on this report at the FSG website:

When I look back at the effectiveness of evaluation over the past 30 years, I am not at all happy. Maybe it is because I trained as an engineer and slowly migrated to corporate management accountancy and being a CFO. Evaluation is a management tool, but too little and too late, at any rate as used by the World Bank, the UN and others.

I expect any upgrade of evaluation to be still too little and too late. Big social problems need to be addressed with initiatives that incorporate accounting for impact on people and planet that is as timely and rigorous as the accounting for revenues, costs and profit.

This can be done, but I don't see much movement towards it in most of the writing that is being done about sustainability, resilience, green, and so on.

I am encouraged that more and more people seem to understand what is possible with modern data processing, but there must be a meaningful analysis framework.

Peter Burgess TrueValueMetrics

Next Generation Evaluation: Embracing Complexity, Connectivity, and Change

Written by Srik Gopalakrishnan, Hallie Preskill, SJ Lu

This Learning Brief draws from literature and research, as well as more than a dozen interviews with foundation leaders, evaluation practitioners, and social sector thought leaders, with the intention of starting the conversation in the field around Next Generation Evaluation characteristics and approaches. Open pdf ... Next_Generation_Evaluation

Our Next Generation Evaluation initiative is advancing conversations about how evaluation and learning must evolve to stay relevant, timely, and useful. We've identified six characteristics that unite the most promising efforts to expand the sector's evaluation practices, as well as three specific “game-changing” approaches that embody the potential of Next Generation Evaluation. We invite you to join us for a one-day conference at Stanford University on Thursday, November 14.

Conference attendees will learn:

• What are the fundamental forces driving the need for social sector evaluation to evolve?
• What specific characteristics differentiate next generation approaches?
• What are the most promising approaches and examples of how social sector players are practicing Next Generation Evaluation?
• What are the implications for the social sector and individual organizations moving forward?