For philanthropic evaluator and post-graduate fellow Endaisia Love, a particular phrase drives her work: “nothing about us−without us.”
“Traditionally, the role of the evaluator is to be totally objective,” she says. “But there are real people attached to what we do, and that’s important to remember. In the communities that I've grown up in, people of color are researched a lot, but they may not know they’re a subject of research. They don’t have a voice in it, and when the results come out, it isn’t shared with them. That creates a lot of mistrust.”
Through a two-year fellowship developed in partnership between the Walton Family Foundation and Southern Methodist University’s Center on Research and Evaluation (CORE), Endaisia is helping to shift how grantees are evaluated to a more collaborative and inclusive process.
As foundation evaluation evolves, the goal of the Advancing Evaluation in Philanthropy (AEP) Fellowship is to improve the practices and approaches of a field that remains opaque to many outside philanthropy. It also includes an explicit focus on developing professionals from traditionally underrepresented communities and utilizing more culturally relevant and equitable evaluation (CREE) designs.
The Walton Family Foundation’s support for the fellowship reflects our commitment to being a learning organization. Currently supporting two fellows with CORE, the fellowship is part of a deliberate and meaningful pivot to place trust and shared learning at the center of our evaluation work.
Fellows split their time between the foundation and CORE, learning and gaining experience working in a philanthropic organization and as an evaluator in the field.
By being more collaborative with the communities the foundation supports, we can achieve a vision for defining and measuring success which is rooted in these communities and sustained into the future.
Building a more diverse and inclusive field is one way to better define success in a field where currently, roughly two-thirds of evaluators are white.
Traditionally, philanthropic evaluation has been a very opaque field with multiple barriers to entry, some of which are unintentional and unnecessary. The AEP fellowship marks an important step forward by providing a space where evaluators from diverse backgrounds can transform the field by taking into account their experiences.
The child of an educator, Endaisia grew up in San Antonio, Texas. She later studied sociology and statistics at Trinity University and measurement and evaluation at Boston College. “At first, I didn’t really know what evaluation was, but I loved being able to provide validation through numbers and research for the experiences that people were having.”
As an AEP fellow, Endaisia is helping both the Walton Family Foundation and organizations like the United Way in Dallas better understand the impact of their grants through the lens of the people and communities impacted by their work. “Evaluation is usually pretty high-level. You budget a certain amount of time. You administer some surveys. It can be pretty extractive. While data and statistics are important, they don’t tell you the whole story,” says Endaisia.
“That’s why it’s so important to be in close proximity to the community you are evaluating, to let folks see and understand what you are doing,” she adds. “Numbers can change, but those numbers don’t always mean a program is no longer effective. The community gives you that needed context.”
Her community-focused approach informs her work with nonprofits like Empowering the Masses, which runs a community market in Dallas. Endaisia met founder Tammy Johnson at a Black Women in Philanthropy event.
“She mentioned needing support in understanding and measuring outcomes and I offered to help,” Endaisia says. She is working with Empowering the Masses to create a measurement plan and theory of change for the market.
Endaisia applies culturally relevant evaluation practices to better understand the historic and socio-political context of the communities where she works. “Even though I come from a similar community, I'm not from this particular community. They are the experts. I'm just a facilitator to help them advocate for themselves.”
She also applies the concept of positionality – the implicit and explicit biases of the evaluator – to her larger understanding. “There is value in a variety of experiences. Different perspectives can illuminate things that might not be apparent to the evaluator.”
Endaisia notes that one of the core principles of CREE is the importance of shifting the balance from judging grant effectiveness to learning and advancing together. “Instead of it being the funder or an evaluator team with all the power, CREE brings the community to the table to help us understand what questions to ask, whose voices need to be heard, and what issues are important to them,” she says.
Endaisia believes that through this work, she is helping to shift the “ivory tower” mentality of evaluation. “As evaluators, we decide what data is and isn’t important. But what we find isn’t necessarily important to the community. We need to remember to analyze and share this data in a way that is helpful to the community.”
While many culturally relevant evaluation practices haven’t yet been widely adopted in philanthropy, innovators like Endaisia are doing their part to ensure the model becomes more widespread.
“I think philanthropy can learn a lot from CREE, but it's a big shift,” she says. “As evaluators, bringing more people to the table is a good first step. Better understanding and input from grantees can help them become more successful, build capacity and ultimately, become more self-sufficient. It’s a goal we should all be working towards.”
