Traditional evaluation practices are extractive. Philanthropy can shift power to communities through more equitable evaluation.
In the philanthropy sector, growing efforts to shift power to communities often seem at odds with evidence-based practices that evaluate the effectiveness of the programs funders support. Traditional monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) approaches can pressure grantees to focus on easily measurable results at the expense of working toward long-term social change.
In a recent Stanford Social Innovation Review article, for example, Mona Mourshed described the infatuation with measuring the number of beneficiaries served—a common measurement in traditional MEL—as a “plague of metric monomania.” Such measurements, which can be rigid and extractive, often ignore the depth of the social issues a program aims to address.
A growing number of funders are seeking to assess the impact their work has on grantees and communities without relying solely on traditional MEL methods.