In the midst of all this transition, we’ve been thinking a lot about what “home” means to us. Is it the stuff and the papers we’ve held onto all these years? Is it the restaurants we love nearby, that we associate with happy hour or a quick bite in between analysis meetings? Is it the pictures that hang on the…

Now available in the Foundation Review! We’re pleased to announce the publication of “Collaborating Within to Support Systems Change: The Need For — and Limits of — Cross-Team Grantmaking,” co-authored by Director Anjie Rosga, Senior Associate Theresa Esparrago Lieu, and Communications Manager Natalie Blackmur with our colleagues Anna Cruz and Chris Kabel at the Kresge Foundation. This article arose out…

I felt an immediate sense of identification when I read this recent tweet by Jara Dean Coffey: “I am a privileged non essential knowledge worker” Sitting with this as being part of my truth. — Jara Dean-Coffey (@jdeancoffey) April 17, 2020 These days, it’s hard to look beyond what’s right in front of us. Rapid assessment and scenario planning can help. I’ve found…

On August 16, we celebrated our late CEO Ellen Irie’s birthday. We called it Ellen Day and marked the occasion by inviting two local nonprofits to an afternoon of pro-bono consultation. “Consulting Cafes” were a tradition Ellen started last year on our 20th anniversary, and it was her vision that we continue to give our time to organizations with small…

This past year, we released a series of case studies on how different organizations are distributing leadership—that is, how they bring more of their staff into decision-making processes. Along with our partners at the Hewlett Foundation and Open Mind Consulting, we learned a ton about how these organizations share information, authority, and responsibility to make distributed leadership work. But learning…

In 2019, we’ve taken time to reflect, care for ourselves, and look ahead. We wanted to share a bit about where we’ve been this year, and where we hope to go. We’ve had plenty to celebrate so far. Among the highlights, we’ve been working inside and out to strengthen our commitments to inclusion and racial equity. We’re exploring new opportunities…

With deep sadness, we’re writing to share that Ellen Irie passed away Thursday, November 22, 2018 surrounded by her husband, Don, and her boys, Cole and Cory. We loved Ellen. We already miss her. Ellen was Informing Change’s President and CEO. For us, that meant she was a grounded leader, a helpful friend, and a trusted confidante. She was uncompromising…

Informing Change is out and about this conference season! This year our staff will be traveling to conferences in the United States and Canada to discuss with our colleagues in the social sector our pressing questions about the role of evaluation in informing just and compassionate change. To this end, on October 31, Informing Change staff members Anjie Rosga, Michael…

This October, we’re celebrating 20 years of Informing Change. For the past two decades, our company’s founding values of intelligence, integrity, and compassion have guided everything we do, from who we work with, to the way we do our work. When we added the pursuit of social justice to our values in 2015, we did so to make explicit what has…

More than ever, nonprofits need to assess, reflect on, sharpen and communicate about their work—to better meet their missions, satisfy demands from multiple stakeholders and ensure their sustainability. In this context, data are becoming increasingly valuable as currency across the nonprofit world. Yet, nonprofits’ ability to collect, understand and use data often falls far behind the needs. Most nonprofits stand…

When complex, external factors—ranging from policies and economic shifts to technological advances and environmental changes—come crashing through a program’s implementation, data from a traditional, summative evaluation can become obsolete and even counter-productive. Enter developmental evaluations, which deliver feedback on how an intervention fits within the broader system it’s trying to affect and, in turn, reveal pathways for change that more…

This fall, Dr. Michael P. Arnold joined the Informing Change team, and after a few weeks of settling in, he and I sat down to chat about why strategic learning and evaluation are important, and what motivates and shapes the way he does his work. What drives you to help organizations evaluate and learn about their work? I have a deep…

Our heads are spinning and our hearts are heavy. Rather than celebrating a shattered glass ceiling, we feel the weight of a lower one bearing down on us. This election is a reminder that real change is almost never linear and steady. It happens in fits and spurts—in maddening steps backward for every relentless push forward. This week, we have…

The California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) funded Center for Care Innovations (CCI) to develop a 14-month, cohort-based learning program for safety net healthcare organizations to strengthen their data analytics capabilities to improve patient care. CCI recently launched datadrivenculture.org, which adapts SNAP’s curriculum and learning tools into an online, webinar format for any organization to use. There are videos and tools…

The air is crisp and the days are shorter, which means at Informing Change, we’re working hard to prepare for AEA 2016. This year, Senior Associate Theresa Esparrago Lieu, Director Anjie Rosga and I will be traveling to Atlanta to compare notes with evaluators from around the world on what can happen when we bring design and evaluation together to…