This is our third and final post in a series sharing tips from The IllumiLab team and members of our community of practice for nonprofits that are preparing to hire their first internal evaluator. In our last post, we shared some tips and questions to consider as you decide what type of support your evaluator[…]
Tools are Just Tools In our first years, The IllumiLab’s work was focused almost exclusively on building tools nonprofits could use to measure their performance (logic models, measures, data collection tools, performance management plans, etc.). This was the pain point organizations experienced, and this was the service they requested. But we soon realized that without[…]
If we are too busy to plan, too busy to think, and too busy to reflect, we should stop and ask ourselves, “What are we so busy doing, and are we really committed to doing it well?” As Megan and I have been researching our Theory of Change, we’ve been digging into the literature on strategic,[…]
Yes, this is one of those posts that aims to re-frame this crisis, to find a silver lining, to see the glass half-full. If you’re not in the mood for that right now, I won’t be offended. But please do come back and read this post when you’re ready to think about what’s next. In[…]
In January and February, I asserted that you’re a project manager and that project planning is a team sport, and I want to expand on those ideas here. So much of the work that nonprofit managers do is about managing change, and that often takes the form of projects. Responding to site visit findings. Implementing[…]
As promised in our October newsletter (click here to subscribe), Insight Partners has some exciting things planned for our third year, including this blog series by guest blogger Julia Pickup, MSW, LCSW. Julia is a highly skilled therapist, clinical supervisor, instructor, and program director. She thrives on developing clinicians to reach their full potential, building team[…]
This is the fourth and final post in a series on Evaluative Thinking (ET) in nonprofits. In the first post, I shared definitions of ET and contrasted it with evaluation itself. Next, I shared some tips and tools for encouraging and practicing ET. And last time, I shared some examples of what ET looks like[…]
In my last post, I offered some common definitions of evaluative thinking compared to evaluation and stressed how critical evaluative thinking is to meaningful and useful evaluation. In this post, I want to share some tips for encouraging and practicing evaluative thinking within your organizations. Setting the Stage In their article Defining and Teaching Evaluative[…]
Anytime we do things for the “wrong” reasons, there’s a good chance that experience will be less fulfilling, less meaningful, and less useful than if we’d done it for the “right” reasons. The same is true of evaluation. When we do it because someone tells us to (funder, donor, accreditor) and not because we want[…]
In my last post, I offered a basic definition of organizational culture: the system of shared beliefs, values, and assumptions that govern the way people behave in organizations. Culture shapes how we communicate, make decisions, reward and incentivize certain behaviors, solve problems, make change, set direction, and on and on. Culture can Kill Change In[…]