Evaluation

Practical Guide for Engaging Stakeholders in Developing Evaluation Questions

Hallie Preskill, Nathalie Jones
An evaluation’s findings may be more relevant, credible, and useful when a wide range of stakeholders are involved in developing its guiding questions. In this practical guide, FSG notes that soliciting input from stakeholders early in the evaluation design process addresses specific stakeholder interests for improving program effectiveness, influencing policy decisions, and instituting behavioral and organizational change. The guide describes a five-step process for engaging stakeholders in developing evaluation questions, and includes four worksheets to facilitate the planning and implementation of a stakeholder engagement process.
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Breakthroughs in Shared Measurement and Social Impact

Mark Kramer, Marcie Parkhurst, Lalitha Vaidyanathan
The social sector’s ability to solve complex social problems is limited by traditional approaches to grantee performance and outcome measurement. By focusing on individual grants and nonprofit initiatives, these measurement approaches neglect the reality that no single organization alone can solve the scale of today’s major social challenges. Our research highlights 20 examples of social enterprises that have developed innovative and coordinated web-based approaches to reporting performance, outcome and impact measurements over multiple social enterprises and stakeholders.
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Trustee Evaluation Toolkit: New Ideas and Resources for Effective Evaluation

Mark Kramer, Eva Nico, Samantha Nobles-Block
Is your foundation’s use of evaluation relevant to your decision making? Are your board conversations about evaluation productive? Is it time to improve evaluation? The Evaluation Kit for Trustees is a project of FSG Social Impact Advisors, based on interviews with foundation trustees, CEOs and evaluation experts from across the country, made possible with funding from The James Irvine Foundation. The toolkit is intended to help trustees and foundations engage in evaluation to help better plan work, improve implementation, and track progress toward goals.
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Growing Smarter: Achieving Sustainability in Emerging Community Foundations

Eva Nico, Rebecca Graves, Tracy Foster, Fay Hanleybrown
It's a striking paradox: as community foundations grow their assets, their sustainability is often threatened. This report, written by FSG Social Impact Advisors and sponsored by The James Irvine Foundation, is based on research with growing and community foundations. Community foundations of virtually any size will find valuable information, case studies and economic models. An executive summary and discussion guide, included in the paper, are also available as separate files for easy distribution. A board presentation introduces core concepts of the report.
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Toward a New Approach to Product Development Partnership (PDP) Performance Measurement

Major corporations, philanthropic organizations, governments, and social sector organizations have joined forces to develop health products for neglected diseases. At the center of these multi-sector collaborations are innovative organizations, known as product development partnerships (PDPs). With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, FSG completed a comprehensive review of the state of performance measurement among PDPs and developed a working paper to establish a common approach to performance measurement among PDPs and donors.
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From Insight to Action: New Directions in Foundation Evaluation

Communicating Education Metrics

Jason Lee, Hallie Preskill, Rebecca Graves
Communicating social metrics efficiently can be a challenging but essential component of effective program or advocacy strategy. Our research highlights eight types of communication tools, which demonstrate options to convey complex data to a wide range of users.
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Measuring Innovation - Evaluation in the Field of Social Entrepreneurship

Mark Kramer
This FSG white paper, commissioned by the Skoll Foundation, reviews best practices for evaluating social entrepreneurship.
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The Nestlé Concept of Corporate Social Responsibility as Implemented in Latin America

Mark Kramer, Marc Pfitzer and Karin Jestin
This FSG report describes Nestlé's approach to corporate social responsibility through the lens of a new CSR framework by Harvard's Michael Porter and FSG's Mark Kramer that focuses on creating shared value for society and the corporation.
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The Evaluation Matrix

Mark Kramer
A 2003 article that deconstructs the multi-faceted discipline of evaluation.
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Benchmarking Philanthropy

John Kania
This article argues that benchmarking an organization's social impact against that of its peers is a powerful tool to justify activities.
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The Foundation Performance Dashboard - Vital Statistics for Social Impact

Mark Kramer and John Kania
A way for foundations to develop a clear, concise, cost-effective, and integrated picture of foundation performance.
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When Success is Only an Intermediate Goal

Kyle Peterson, Laura Loker and Matthew Clark
How Swiss-based Medicines for Malaria Ventures developed a new approach to performance measurement.
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The Evaluation of Capacity Building Grants - Key Learnings for a Successful Program

Rebecca Graves and Henry Culbreath
A review of FSG's work with the Maine Community Foundation to assess the effectiveness of its capacity building efforts.
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Allocating Resources in a Time of Scarcity

Mark Kramer and John Kania
This 2002 article argues that particularly in an environment of pressured investment returns, donors should maximize their impact, by focusing their giving on the areas of their highest social return.
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From Insight to Action: New Directions in Evaluation