The Funder & Evaluator Affinity Network: Changing the way evaluators and funders work together to deepen social impact

Learning and evaluation—the “R&D” of the social sector—are critical functions for foundations seeking to maximize their impact. By supporting innovation, adaptation, and continuous improvement processes, learning and evaluation helps organizations get closer to the changes they seek.

History and Evolution of FEAN

Evaluation professionals working with and within philanthropy are experiencing a time of rapid evolution: growing complexity of philanthropic investments, foundations’ internal capacity constraints, and demand for learning-supportive skills and approaches. While ensuring a strong bench of evaluation professionals is critical to philanthropy, few mechanisms exist to support dialogue and capacity development across evaluators working in this sector.

Enter the Funder & Evaluator Affinity Network (FEAN). With initial support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, FEAN convened a group of 27 leaders of small and midsize evaluation firms and funders to discuss the state of evaluation alongside the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations Learning Conference in 2017. The group discussed the state of evaluation and tested the salience of several issues, proposed by Meg Long of Equal Measure and Clare Nolan of Engage R+D, such as: learning and evaluation in philanthropy is changing; there are concerns about the usefulness and influence of evaluation; and building the evaluation field’s capacity will require new levels of partnership.

The meeting affirmed the resonance of those issues among a diverse set of participants. It also underscored and elevated the need for funders and evaluators to work together in new ways to build the shared capacity of philanthropic evaluators — those within philanthropy as well as external consultants.

Following the inaugural meeting, and in subsequent planning and ideation sessions, FEAN was met with great interest and excitement from many in the philanthropic field. Drawing on that excitement, FEAN adopted the principle of idea diffusion to shift field practice among evaluators working with, and within philanthropy. The theory is predicated on identifying and empowering “early adopters” and “influencers” (i.e., individuals who have bought into the FEAN agenda early, and for whom advancing this agenda also advances their organizational and professional priorities).

As one example of that diffusion, in FEAN’s third and fourth years the emphasis shifted towards action — supporting member Action Teams which worked to develop and launch a comprehensive Call to Action series that focused on actionable solutions to urgent issues in philanthropic evaluation, and to embed aspects of the FEAN effort within existing, mission-, vision-, and values- aligned initiatives or organizations.

Along with the member Action Team, FEAN seeded additional important field initiatives as another way to fuel member dialogue and action. The initiatives included the research into past and current talent pipeline programs conducted by the Luminare Group and the piloting of the Evaluation Roundtable expansion by the Center for Evaluation Innovation.

Although FEAN was brought to a planned close in fall of 2021, it created substantive change. Four years and one global pandemic after its founding, funders and evaluators have come a long way together in this work: evaluators are working in deep partnership with funders to address the urgent issues of inequity and systemic racism. Rather than being seen as contractors and vendors, evaluators are far more likely to be perceived by philanthropy as partners with equal passion for the social change they seek and expertise that can complement and guide their efforts.

Achievements

Since the first convening, the Funder & Evaluator Affinity Network grew to more than 400 members. Along the way, FEAN had many accomplishments:

Raised awareness of this effort and the issues it seeks to address through blogs hosted by the Foundation Review, the Center for Effective Philanthropy, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, Glasspockets by Candid, the American Evaluation Association, and more.
Hosted discussions at the annual American Evaluation Association (AEA) conferences and at the conference of the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) attended by 80 to 100 people each, including both new and returning participants.
Conducted a survey of network members in which more than 40 individuals responded and shared actions and solutions to support the FEAN agenda.
Established a partnership with the Luminare Group to analyze of practices and investments related to enhancing the nature of and access to evaluators in philanthropy and develop recommendations for improving the field.
Established a partnership with the Center for Evaluation Innovation to test an expansion of the Evaluation Roundtable model to help senior and emerging evaluators better understand and navigate foundations; increase the diversity of skilled and effective evaluators working in philanthropy; and build a collaborative network of evaluators working in philanthropy.
Created a mechanism to support coordination across the Center for Evaluation Innovation, Luminare Group, and the Equitable Evaluation Initiative to ensure our process is attentive to diversity, equity, and inclusion principles rather than reinforcing existing structural inequities.
Hosted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial justice movement of 2020, virtual coffee chats for the field in May and June of 2020
Launched the Call to Action series of five briefs and hosted a series of webinars with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations in 2020 and 2021.
Conducted a final survey of the FEAN membership for feedback on how FEAN has impacted the field.