Learning with Diverse Communities Through Culturally Responsive Evaluation

As Kathleen Enright rightly stated in the opening article of this issue: “Until all participants in the evaluation chain embrace and support a learning focus, I think our ability to use evaluation results to increase impact will be limited.” As grantmakers, we arguably play the most important role in ensuring that all stakeholders receive the support they need to be full participants, contributors, learners and beneficiaries of an evaluation process. For evaluation to be worth the money and time we spend on it, everyone needs to be a full participant — funders, grantee organizations and even the end beneficiaries, the people we all hope to help. But too often, evaluation discourages and disconnects people instead of engaging them. How can we make evaluation accessible to all?