Evaluation Isn’t What It Used to Be

To the Editor:

Rose Meissner’s thoughtful letter (“Charity Evaluation: More of a Luxury Than Many People Care to Admit,” Letters to the Editor, March 11) in response to my opinion piece (“Charity Evaluation: a Necessity, Not a Luxury,” My View, January 28) articulates the traditional barriers to conducting evaluations within charities. These objections fail to recognize the fundamental principles of ongoing learning that are at the core of the new evaluation movement.

The first principle is that both process and outcomes can and should be evaluated. This insures that evaluations have a greater utility than just proving the impact of services to a funder.

Ms. Meissner implies that the cost of an evaluation is a sunken cost, a black hole for funds that could have better been spent on services. However, since we both agree that resources are precious and scarce, charities have an even greater incentive to measure their processes to insure that resources are being used efficiently. Ongoing process evaluations enable charities to understand inefficiencies and weaknesses and fix them in midstream. The result is an improved bottom line and streamlined services to clients.

I strongly object to the notion that all evaluations must be “professionally” designed and “objectively” conducted. Even the most traditional grant makers around the country have come to the conclusion that “objectivity” is not the sole reserve of outsiders with a doctoral degree. In fact, who better to understand and measure the effects of an effort than those who are most intimately involved in the service? This is particularly relevant when the emphasis is on learning and improving one’s efforts, not just communicating success to an outsider.

But can’t staffs skew results to reflect only positive news, Ms. Meissner asks? Of course they can, just as they can also cook the books. My point is that evaluation must become a regular way of doing business, akin to bookkeeping. This insures that the real costs are supported by the organization and not subtracted from services. It also encourages the charity and its key supporters to develop a commitment to ongoing learning as a regular course of business, not an episodic reaction to funding pressure.

Finally, Ms. Meissner’s likening of charities to “toy boats bobbing in an ocean” of various other societal and cultural factors, and her fallback position of using “Common sense [and] subjective assessments” for grant making are throwbacks to a quaint notion of charitable largesse. I have witnessed charitable agencies develop the discipline to responsibly ask and answer critical questions about the processes and immediate effects of their services — which is quite different from conducting longitudinal research. Anything less and we shortchange hard-working staffs, deserving clients, donors, and the public.

Allison H. Fine
Executive Director
InnoNet
Washington