Parents in Siberia are organizing community foundations to improve local education. Scientists are bringing high-tech civilian products to market. Advocacy groups in Uzbekistan are protecting intellectual property rights. Journalists in the Caucasus are exposing abuses of public officials. The challenge, for us and for our grantees, is to assess what is working in these projects and what is not and to make these lessons part of our common lexicon.
Few foundations use evaluation systematically to improve their work.
A recent article in the Harvard Business Review noted that most foundations are so satisfied with doing good that they are not striving to do good better . Improvement requires critical performance analysis, both of a foundation and of its grantees. Yet the Harvard authors contend that foundations set aside almost no money for program evaluation. In addition, the evaluations either lack objectivity, because they are managed by the grantees themselves, or are limited to a single grant, thus missing the cumulative impact of foundation investments. At the Eurasia Foundation, we are striving to examine the results of our grants.