2022 Conference TIG Sessions

AEA Conference TIG Sessions 2022

 

 

Internal Evaluation TIG Annual Meeting

  • Tuesday November 1 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time)

Propelling Gender Equality & Social Justice from the Inside-Out: Organizational Gender Equality Self-Assessments

  • Wednesday 4:15 PM - 5:15 PM (Central Standard Time)
  • Facilitator: Andrew Gleason

Gender inequalities do not exist in isolation – rather, power inequalities show up in many ways and overlap with gender to create intersecting forms of discrimination. At Save the Children, we recognize that these inequalities exist within organizational contexts and that there is an inextricable link between how we operate internally and the programs we implement across the world. We believe that transformative change requires a whole-institution, inside-out approach by which we align the agency’s internal operations, programs and advocacy with gender equality principles. The Gender Equality Self-Assessment is both a participatory evaluation tool and process that enables organizations to self-assess their progress towards embedding gender equality from the ‘inside-out.’ It serves as an important accountability mechanism that can accelerate change across organizational systems, policies, practices and culture, and drive commitment to and ownership of gender equality and broader social justice initiatives.

Employees Between the Program and (Evaluation) Project: A Discussion of Best Practices and Lessons Learned during Internal Evaluation of a DEI Program

  • Wednesday 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM (Central Standard Time)
  • Facilitator: Kelsey Risman; Authors or Discussion Group Leaders: Sherrie Godette

AccessLex is conducting a five-year mixed-methods evaluation of its diversity pathway program, LexScholars. The evaluation is the most robust investigation of legal education pathway program effectiveness to date. Our discussion will center on best practices for internal evaluation alongside lessons learned from our experience. We welcome new/experienced internal evaluators, and folks particularly interested in evaluation of programs that reflect diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals.

We will provide a description of the LexScholars program and evaluation. We will then discuss discoveries and challenges from the first two years of the evaluation. Discussion will be structured around several real-work scenarios which shed light on the line between program administration and program evaluation. For example, evaluating a program to generate results that are both rigorous and transferable yet still achieve the organization’s goals/priorities and considerations for evaluating programs with DEI-related goals and objectives.

United Way Bay Area – Advancing Social Justice through Flexible and Equitable Evaluation

  • Wednesday 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM (Central Standard Time)
  • Facilitator: Zachariah Rabah

Join this session to learn how United Way Bay Area’s SparkPoint program integrates equity principles into program evaluations through disaggregating data and assessing trends against community data. In addition, SparkPoint engages client ambassadors as stakeholders in the evaluation to inform programmatic recommendations. The SparkPoint evaluation framework and definitions of success has evolved and shifted over the years to better align with clients’ definitions of success. SparkPoint also leverages and shares data with partners and proactively works alongside staff to learn from evaluation results and address programmatic gaps. We will share key lessons learned from adopting a flexible approach grounded in principles of equity and social justice.

Shaping Evaluation through Equity, Love & Liberation

  • Thursday 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM (Central Standard Time)
  • Session Chair: Tracesea Slater

Inspired by The Equitable Evaluation Framework™, Colorado Collaboratory on Equitable Evaluation, and Shiree Tang’s brown paper on Measuring Love, members of an internal evaluation and research team created a working group called Equity, Love and Liberation. The panel will share how the group was formed and evolved over time, including challenges, successes, examples of concrete actions and impact. We are eager to share our journey, hoping to provide inspiration and guidance on a way to begin incorporating social justice work into evaluation. Our hope is that more evaluators will feel inspired and capable of starting their own groups, collaboratively creating spaces and structures for continued growth and accountability. We would love to have networks of teams sharing experiences, learning from each other and pushing each other to do better. Ultimately, we would love for evaluation standards to be truly rooted in equity as the norm instead of the exception.

Leveraging technology to provide equitable evaluation capacity-building: perspectives from designers, facilitators, and participants of a bilingual, transnational, virtual/in-person workshop on developing performance indicators

  • Thursday 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM (Central Standard Time)
  • Session Chair: Danique Gigger

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, using innovative ways to build evaluation capacity globally is crucial as virtual environments affect how we conduct and participate in evaluations. In February 2022, United States (U.S.)-based evaluation specialists and colleagues in Senegal from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) jointly provided a bilingual, interactive, and hybrid (in-person participants and virtual presenters) evaluation capacity-building workshop. Participants included five CDC-funded partner organizations responsible for developing and standardizing performance indicators for their programs. This panel presentation will describe lessons learned from designing, facilitating, coordinating, and participating in the indicator development session. Highlighting the conference theme, panelists will discuss how technology enabled equitable reach and a cost-efficient option for evaluation capacity-building by uniting individuals across geographies and languages. This hybrid model for evaluation capacity-building reflects a heightened consideration of funding accountability and how to leverage technology to expand evaluation services around the world equitably.

(Re)shaping the internal evaluator toolbox: Integrating participatory approaches and feedback loops

  • Friday 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM (Central Standard Time)
  • Facilitator: Lymari Benitez; Authors or Discussion Group Leaders: Lymari Benitez

Nonprofit internal evaluators are integrating participatory approaches and feedback loops into their practice to balance issues associated with traditional evaluation, funders’ expectations, and representation of key stakeholders. In this roundtable, Pace Center for Girls, a nonprofit providing social and academic wraparound services to girls and young women in the United States Southeast, will share its experience implementing participatory evaluation and feedback loops to balance these demands and produce actionable and equitable information.  The roundtable will allow anyone whose work involves internal evaluation to brainstorm about (re)shaping practices with the application of these approaches. Questions addressed are:

  • What challenges have we experienced integrating participatory approaches and feedback loops into program evaluation?
  • What strategies have we used to answer those challenges? 
  • How do we envision the role of participatory approaches and feedback loops in reshaping internal evaluation practices?
  • What preconditions need to be met to reach that vision? 

Building a Team of Evaluative Thinkers: Reshaping Internal Evaluators’ Roles in Building Evaluation Capacity to Ensure Organization Sustainability

  • Saturday 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM (Central Standard Time)
  • Facilitator: Taylor Harrell; Authors or Discussion Group Leaders: Kendra Straub

This workshop aims to reshape the role of an internal evaluator as a capacity builder. This session will provide collaborative training on tactics to increase staff evaluation capacity and data literacy to ensure organization suitability. Facilitators will share a framework to build internal evaluation capacity that leverages digital data technology to attract new funding and enhance equity in programming. Additionally, you will hear real-life examples, success stories, and common pitfalls on the path to enhance internal evaluation capacity.

Attendees will learn:

  • How to assess your organization's internal capacity to utilize digital data and technology to guide evaluation and decision making.
  • A best-practice framework and core strategies that can be used to train your staff, create data management systems, and sustain progress over time.
  • To challenge previous notions surrounding internal evaluators' roles in organizations and become versed in how to build evaluation capacity across an organization.

Rigorous and rapid approaches to monitoring and evaluating Public Health Emergency (PHE) responses

  • Saturday 9:15 AM - 10:15 AM (Central Standard Time)
  • Session Chair: Danique Gigger

The application of monitoring and evaluation methods and reporting typically happens post-response. This session highlights how monitoring and evaluation experts in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified and adapted various methodological and strategic approaches to access or collect relevant data since March 2020 for the COVID-19 pandemic to improve efforts to effectively respond to the current pandemic and future public health emergencies (PHE). Presenters will discuss different strategies and advantages of leveraging a diverse range of methods to rapidly collect data during an active PHE while maintaining rigor in evaluative approaches. Panelists will also present how reshaping traditional approaches to evaluating PHE responses resulted in innovative thinking that maximizes technology, captures the voices of populations of focus, and provides funding accountability for PHEs. We anticipate that public health evaluators can learn from and easily apply many of these best practices for future PHE responses.