Worshops at a Glance

Evaluation 101 – Foundations for Practice

What is evaluation actually for—learning, accountability, or both or something more? What is working for whom, in what context and why as a result of your work? How does evaluation support organizational decision-making and your organization’s mission?

Why this course matters:
 Evaluation shapes culture whether we intend it to or not. This course helps people see evaluation as a shared learning practice—one that influences what gets noticed, discussed, and acted on every day.

Evaluation shapes organizational culture whether we intend it to or not. What we measure, question, and report influences what people pay attention to—and what gets ignored. This course positions evaluation as a shared learning practice rather than a compliance exercise. By strengthening evaluation literacy and building confidence in asking meaningful questions, participants help their organizations make better decisions, learn more intentionally, and align daily work with mission and impact. When evaluation becomes a tool for collective sensemaking, it strengthens accountability while also supporting long-term systems change.

Start Date: April …

Duration: 2-hours/ weekly for 4 weeks

Developing a Theory of Change

Can you clearly explain how your work actually creates change? What assumptions do you have about the nature, type and direction of change?

If your answer is “sort of”… this course is for you. Unspoken assumptions quietly shape culture. This course helps teams make their thinking visible, align on what change really means, and build shared understanding that supports learning instead of confusion.

Why this course matters:
Unspoken assumptions quietly shape culture. This course helps teams make their thinking visible, align on what change really means, and build shared understanding that supports learning instead of confusion.

Unspoken assumptions quietly shape strategy, culture, and impact. When teams aren’t aligned on how change is expected to happen, confusion and fragmentation follow.

This course helps organizations surface assumptions, clarify pathways of change, and build shared understanding about what success really means. A strong Theory of Change becomes more than a diagram—it becomes a learning tool that strengthens strategy, supports adaptation, and aligns action across roles. This course also includes a 2-hour 1:1 coaching session to review and refine your theory of change.

Clear thinking about change is foundational to sustainable systems transformation.

Building Evaluation Frameworks

Are you measuring what matters—or just what’s easiest to count? Do your indicators actually help you make decisions? Does your evaluation framework guide learning, or sit on a shelf? Can you explain why you’re measuring what you’re measuring?

Why this course matters:
 What organizations measure sends a strong cultural signal about what matters. This course helps teams design evaluation frameworks that support reflection, learning, and adaptation—not just reporting.

What organizations choose to measure sends a powerful cultural signal about what matters. Poorly designed frameworks create reporting burdens; thoughtful ones create learning.

This course helps teams translate strategy into meaningful questions, indicators, and methods that support reflection and adaptation. By designing proportionate and purposeful evaluation frameworks, organizations strengthen their ability to track progress, respond to emerging realities, and focus on outcomes that truly matter.

Strong frameworks support evidence-informed impact—not just documentation. This course also includes a 2-hour 1:1 coaching session to review and refine your Evaluation Framework.

Evaluative Thinking and Emergent Learning

Are you collecting data—or actually making sense of it? Do people in your organization feel safe asking hard questions? What would change if learning was built into everyday work? Are you using evidence to confirm decisions—or to challenge them?

Evaluative Thinking and Emergent Learning focuses on building evaluation-informed ways of thinking that can be applied every day—not just during formal evaluations. This course helps participants strengthen habits of curiosity, reflection, and inquiry that support learning in uncertain and changing environments.Why this course matters: Learning cultures depend on how people think together. This course builds habits of curiosity, reflection, and sensemaking so learning can happen continuously—not only at the end of a project.

This course builds habits of curiosity, reflection, and shared inquiry that enable learning to happen continuously—not only at the end of a project. By strengthening evaluative thinking, organizations become more responsive, more reflective, and more capable of navigating uncertainty.

When inquiry becomes embedded in everyday practice, systems become more adaptive and resilient.

Systems Thinking in Evaluation

Why this course matters:
 Most challenges organizations face are systemic, not isolated. Yet evaluation often simplifies complexity.

This course helps participants see patterns, relationships, and feedback loops that shape outcomes over time. By moving beyond linear cause-and-effect thinking, organizations can better understand unintended consequences, leverage points, and the broader systems influencing their work.

Systems thinking strengthens strategic alignment and supports deeper, more lasting impact.

Strategies and Developmental Evaluation

What do you do when your strategy keeps changing—but your evaluation can’t? How do you evaluate success when outcomes are still emerging? Are you learning in real time, or only after it’s too late to adapt?

Why this course matters:
 In complex and innovative work, waiting until the end to learn is too late.

Developmental Evaluation is designed for people working in complex, evolving environments where goals, strategies, and outcomes are not fully known in advance. This course focuses on using evaluation to support innovation, adaptation, and real-time learning rather than fixed judgment or after-the-fact assessment.

This course supports organizations to integrate learning into action through developmental evaluation. By building real-time feedback loops and reflection practices, teams can adapt strategy as conditions shift.

When evaluation becomes a learning partner rather than a judgment tool, organizations strengthen their capacity for innovation and systems change.

Building Learning Cultures in Organizations

What happens to lessons learned after the report is written? Is learning an activity—or a habit in your organization? Do your systems reward reflection, or just delivery? How often do people stop to ask, What are we learning from this?

Why this course matters: 
Culture shifts when learning becomes normal.

This course brings the full series together by focusing on the structures, leadership practices, and routines that make reflection and inquiry sustainable. Participants examine how power, safety, and everyday processes shape whether learning thrives or stalls.

Embedding learning into organizational culture strengthens long-term effectiveness and creates the conditions for meaningful, sustained impact.

Place-Based Evaluation Approaches

How do you evaluate change when place and context shape everything? Whose knowledge counts in defining success in a community? Can evaluation reflect lived experience—not just external metrics? What does “impact” look like here, as opposed or similar to there?

Why this course matters:
 Impact does not happen in abstract systems—it happens in real places shaped by history, relationships, and lived experience.

This course supports organizations to design evaluation approaches grounded in local context and community knowledge. By centering place, power, and equity, participants strengthen shared ownership of learning and ensure evaluation reflects lived realities.

Place-responsive evaluation deepens trust, strengthens relationships, and supports systems change rooted in community-defined success.