Provide more technical assistance. Foundations with strong internal evaluation experience can provide technical assistance directly, suggests Bull. In addition, she says, foundations can bring grantees together for peer exchange and can make referrals. Disseminate the information. Levitan sees both opportunity and need for foundations to share what they learn about programs and innovations that work among grantees, particularly about adaptations of working models.
Foundations tend to communicate findings with policymakers and among themselves.
They can do more to document lessons and encourage more experimentation among grantees, she says. Amy Kincaid is principal consultant for ChangeMatters in Takoma Park, Maryland, and works with nonprofit groups to improve their fundraising and organizational capacity. On the Internet Management Library . The program evaluation page on this site reviews key considerations for evaluation of any kind of nonprofit program, plus specific how-to discussions in short sections. Community Toolbox .