An Executive Director’s Guide to Organizational Learning & Evaluation - Advanced Practice Series
A Nonprofit Quarterly Advanced Practice Series
Many organizations have addressed learning and evaluation in fits and starts when a particular grant or contract has required it or when a staff member has had the skill and inclination to do it. Very few organizations have embedded learning and evaluation into their everyday work. As nonprofit leaders, we know learning and evaluation are important, but we struggle to integrate them into the fabric of our organizations. Who has the time or the money?
It's time to refresh our thinking about learning and evaluation and commit to weaving them into organizational practice. We owe it to our constituents and to ourselves. We can't be truly effective without learning and evaluation. An organization with a clear purpose, can demonstrate the change it is contributing to, and that is engaged in learning in order to be as effective as possible---that's compelling to staff, to volunteers, to funders, and to community members. And, it taps into the values that brought us to the nonprofit sector in the first place.
If this resonates for you, we invite you to join us for a four-part Nonprofit Quarterly Advanced Practice series. Individual staff and consultants are welcome, but we especially encourage you to designate two or more people from your organization to move through this course together and reignite the commitment to learning and evaluation across your organization! That's why the course is the same price for any sized group from the same organization.
The course includes practical tools, real-world examples, frank talk about how and why organizations get stuck, team-based homework assignments, and live coaching between sessions to help you problem solve and keep moving.
About the Series
Session One: Getting Grounded
- Review the history, trends, and context for learning and evaluation.
- Articulate the aspiration for “evaluative organizations.”
- Explore your readiness.
Session Two: Organizational Identity & Strategy
- What is strategy formation?
- What makes up an organizational identity and strategic framework?
- Critical questions to define or refine organizational strategy.
Session Three: Strengthening Your Inquiry Practice
- Connecting the Critical Questions to your inquiry practice.
- Practical ways to gather useful information.
Session Four: Developing Practical Systems
- Making sense of the information you collect
- Building it in; making it real; making it last
