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What Evaluation Could Do to Support Foundations: A Framework with Nine Component Parts

Grant-giving foundations are being created these days in record numbers, and there is fairly widespread agreement that evaluation can be a powerful tool for helping them achieve and justify their aims. However, if one looks across foundations at the current status of both their visions for evaluation and their capacity to evaluate, it seems that in many cases evaluative development is only in its initial stages. This article presents a particular vision for evaluation in the form of a framework based on the perceived needs of grant-giving foundations. It goes without saying that the framework can be modified, or another framework substituted for it, but a premise for this article is that there needs to be some explicit vision for evaluation if capacity requirements are to be properly inferred and supported. The framework used here was derived from the experience of a number of diverse organizations. Because the vision for evaluation is thus broad-based, and because the capacity and administrative requirements that stem from it are generic, the analysis given here may prove useful to a variety of audiences. That is, it may be useful not only to those charged with setting up evaluation functions in new foundations, and those working within established foundations that have just embarked upon the evaluative adventure, but also to those working to create or improve evaluation offices in other types of organizations.