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Project partners:
2023 – present
Tomatoes. Photo credit: Roland Dahwen
Beginning in 2023, Ecotrust’s Measurement & Evaluation (M&E) team engaged with consultants from Austin Advocates With and Insight for Action for several activities, including developing a set of equitable evaluation principles, workshops to identify white supremacy culture characteristics in evaluation and how to counter them, and developing an equitable evaluation toolkit, which is shared below.
Equitable Evaluation Toolkit
This toolkit contains six tools and is meant to be adapted to the needs of your project. Successful use of the toolkit doesn’t require the use of every tool, and the tools themselves can be modified. We strongly encourage you to use the first two tools, Equity Considerations and Thumbnail Evaluation Plan (in whole or in part, based on what your project needs). The remaining four tools may be useful based on the needs of your project.
This guide provides full context and instructions for each tool linked below.
This tool is the cornerstone of your evaluation project. It is an essential tool for identifying the primary purpose or motivation for your evaluation; assigning roles and responsibilities to team members; identifying and justifying evaluation methods; and planning the sequence of activities, from design to data collection, analysis, meaning-making, and reporting. It can also be modified to suit your purposes; or filled out in stages over time as you gain more clarity on your evaluation process.
These questions are meant to guide a participatory design and data collection process that engages a range of affected parties to your program, such as current and former participants, partner organizations, community leaders, and at-large community members. One or more of your M&E Team members will facilitate or co-facilitate the design sessions, ideally in collaboration with a program leader. There are separate sets of questions to follow the first two phases of the evaluation process, Design and Data Collection. Answering these questions will set your evaluation process up for success.
Partners
Austin Advocates With (AAW) LLC advocates with the community by uplifting and listening well to the voices of those most impacted and historically marginalized by our systems in order to cultivate brave space for racial justice and transformation through a data-informed approach.
AAW LLC is a black and woman-owned business founded by Amani Austin.
We are a woman-owned, boutique consulting group who works with purpose-driven organizations to strengthen their social impact by serving as a learning partner.
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—Amani Austin, Austin Advocates With
Ecotrust Project Team & Services
Want to learn more? Check out the full Ecotrust Staff & Board and all of our Tools for Building Collective Change.
We build and deliver mission-aligned projects in partnership through large group facilitation, developing ideas into programs, program evaluation and reporting, and
measuring progress in racial equity.
Additional Resources
Brief
A summary of activities conducted to develop and adopt evaluation principles, practices, and tools that are equity-centered and community-focused
Webinar
On April 18, 2024, evaluators Denise Chin and Noah Enelow held a webinar to discuss the process of adopting an Equitable Evaluation approach at Ecotrust.
Blog post
Learn more about the four principles we adopted to better guide the design and execution of our evaluation.
