In January 2019, the RISE Partnership initiative launched as the successor of two programs: PropelNEXT of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and the Building Evaluation Capacity Initiative developed by The Consultation Center at Yale University and The Scattergood Foundation.
Alongside its nonprofit grantees, the RISE Partnership uses data to promote a culture of learning to improve the impact of nonprofits, share lessons with the larger community, and promote equitable practices.
While data and evaluation is used to guide capacity building in nonprofits, the RISE Partnership recognizes the historical and institutionalized norms that perpetuate racism, biases, and other social injustices in the field of evaluation. With the support of the implementation team, consultants, funders, and partners, the RISE Partnership is developing strategies to improve its role in practicing, promoting, and advocating for equity in evaluation.
In order to hold ourselves accountable to our growth in this process, over the next few months, the RISE Partnership will develop a series of blogs and insights to document its progress in equity-centered evaluation. To begin, we are sharing where we are and our ambition of where we hope to be on this journey.
Currently, we are:
– Educating and engaging RISE Partnership staff and consultants through content knowledge and group discussions;
– Understanding where and how DEI is valued and expressed from the perspective our RISE nonprofit grantees;
– Highlighting equity in evaluation in the RISE group learning sessions;
– Creating common language and terms that include identifying cultural context and equity in evaluation;
– Partnering with Philanthropy Network Greater Philadelphia to host the session, Equity-centered Evaluation Design: How Funders Can Assess Progress in Partnership with Nonprofits and Community;
– Learning from other initiatives with similar goals.
We hope to:
– Document our progress and growth to engage and learn from others in the field;
– Embed equity and social justice within the work of RISE internally and externally through programming, learning sessions, communications, and partnerships;
– Advocate for and cultivate shared spaces to engage evaluators and the nonprofit sector in the conversation;
– Continue our partnership with Philanthropy Network Greater Philadelphia to host a second session on Equity-centered Evaluation Design;
– Share our learnings with the fields of evaluation, philanthropy, and the nonprofit sector.
Using this framework, the series of blogs and insights will provide updates on each of our goals in addition to sharing new goals based on lessons learned. We hope you will follow along on this journey with us and join the conversation. Please stay tuned for our next update later this summer.