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 noticed yet, I'm a big fan of collaboration. Early on in my career, I worked with our local homeless coalition. I was the community developer supporting the public awareness, evaluation, and community planning work of over 40 organizations.

I learned pretty quickly what it took to bring people together and focused on the same vision. Food was a big one. But so were understanding, empathy, and trust. In order to collaborate well, we need to be nurturing long-term relationships that foster those things.

I'm working on a project right now where I am being evaluated, and I love it. We're challenging the evaluator to really take us to task on how well we're building trust, sharing power, and creating something that's mutually beneficial.

For many of us who are always so busy, it can be easy to take our relationships for granted. Have you ever measured the strength of your collaboration? What formal and informal ways can you use to make sure partnerships are fruitful now and into the future?

I'm pulling together some resources on measuring collaborative partnerships. Hit reply if you'd like me to send you some!

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