Issue #34 Not at all weekly evaluation inspiration for... Non-profits who DARE When I was pregnant with my first child, a friend who had recently had a baby said her best recommendation was to 'anticipate the baby's needs'. I guess in many ways, I've been doing that for the past 8 years. I was thinking a lot about this as we headed back to school last week. There are certain things that I've learned with years of wisdom that my kids just can't anticipate yet. Like on Friday, when we headed...
11 months ago • 1 min read
Issue #33 Sometimes weekly evaluation inspiration for... Non-profits who DARE Although it's mid-June, here in Southwestern Ontario it's really starting to feel like summer. Warm weather, festivals, and, of course, construction at every turn. As an evaluator, one of our competencies (in Canada, anyway), is reflective practice. I'm a pretty reflective-by-default kind of person (at least that's what my therapists always tell me), but I still take the competency to heart and try to think of ways...
about 1 year ago • 1 min read
Issue #32 Not really weekly evaluation inspiration for... Non-profits who DARE Hello out there! As an evaluator and a generally-curious person, I'm almost constantly reflecting on my experiences and those of others around me. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how I show up in my work (or not), and when it has to be me, versus when I might be able to share the load with others. It reminded me of one of the approaches I advocated for a lot early in my career. I've always loved working as...
about 1 year ago • 2 min read
Issue #31 Not really weekly evaluation inspiration for... Non-profits who DARE Happy (belated) International Women's Day! I've gotten out of the cadence of sending weekly messages, but IWD 2025 inspired me to fire up the newsletter. A lot of the reasons why I haven't been able to do much 'unbillable' work within my business, have to do with the unpaid work I'm doing at home. I remember last IWD I was in week five of sick kids at home. We do our best to keep immune systems strong, but...
over 1 year ago • 1 min read
Issue #30 Weekly evaluation inspiration for... Non-profits who DARE Happy Friday! I'm Allison, learning-focused evaluator and evaluation-focused learner. One of my favourite meetings of the month is with a group of consultants here in Canada. There's no agenda, we just come together and chat about what's going on in our lives at the time. We all come from different places and bring different expertise, but we all have the common experience of working with non-profits in Canada. If you hadn't...
over 1 year ago • 1 min read
Issue #29 Weekly evaluation inspiration for... Non-profits who DARE Hey there! It's Allison, learning-focused evaluator, justice-doer, and, recently, overwhelmed newsletter-writer. Some of you may know that in addition to my non-profit consulting business and momming, I'm doing a PhD in evaluation. In a funny way it feels like 'me-time' when I don't always get a lot of that otherwise. But there are times when the tasks pile up and something's gotta give, and lately I've been having to choose...
over 1 year ago • 1 min read
Issue #28 Weekly evaluation inspiration for... Non-profits who DARE It's your friendly neighbourhood learning-focused evaluator and knowledge sharer, Allison. Here with some weekly musings on how to make evaluative thinking more accessible in your non-profit. Have you ever put something out there, not sure how it would go? This was me, last week. I posted a poll on LinkedIn about what people needed help with in grant writing, working on planning a free webinar. There were three options, and...
almost 2 years ago • 1 min read
Issue #27 Weekly evaluation inspiration for... Non-profits who DARE Hi, I'm Allison. I help small to mid-sized non-profits change the world using data and organizational learning. I'm kind of like the kid who likes orange flavoured candy and trades everyone for the good flavours. I've been accused of being a little too Pollyanna from time to time. I get it, I use strengths-focused approaches to do evaluation. And I really believe that if people just give my kind of evaluation a chance,...
almost 2 years ago • 1 min read
Issue #26 Weekly evaluation inspiration for... Non-profits who DARE Hi, I'm Allison. I'm a learning-focused evaluator with a near-insatiable desire for learning. I've been away for a few weeks, first preparing and going on a summer vacation. But I've missed the last couple of newsletters because of back-to-school and my own current learning. I'm grateful to be doing some work with the Canadian Institute for Conflict Resolution. CICR trains people in a framework called "Third Party Neutral"...
almost 2 years ago • 1 min read