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 Arnold, and Theresa Esparrago Lieu travel to Cleveland, OH to present on the American Evaluations Association‘s timely conference theme, “Speaking Truth to Power.”

• Director Anjie Rosga will speak about how the study of demographics developed to replace trust between people, and about the importance of re-introducing trust back into the social sciences. (11/2 from 10:30 AM to 11:15 AM in the Hilton – Superior Ballroom)
• Director Michael P. Arnold and researcher Michael Hannaman, in partnership with Laura Rodriguez at Youth Outside, will discuss the challenges of measuring leadership and empowerment in underrepresented groups and contextualizing those findings by taking into account systemic power dynamics. (11/3 from 10:15 AM to 11:00 AM in room CC – 13)
• Senior Associate Theresa Esparrago Lieu and Anjie Rosga will also host a roundtable discussion on the developmental evaluation’s potential as an equity tool. (11/3 from 10:15 AM to 11:00 AM in room CC – 21)

In a turbulent time marked by prejudice and distrust, Informing Change continues to believe in evaluation as a tool to build and strengthen cooperative bonds within and among communities. To share some of our experience in this area, Anjie Rosga will join representatives of the Interfaith Center of Greater Philadelphia and Newseum in Toronto, Canada for the 2018 Parliament of the World’s Religions. Their panel, “Making Peace with Data,” will offer strategies for developing indicators for measuring interfaith cooperation.

We are looking forward to connecting with changemakers in our community at the Nonprofit Learning Lab in Oakland, CA. Anjie Rosga and Communications Associate Natalie Blackmur are eager to learn with nonprofit professionals during their session on developing effective Theories of Change on November 8.

Finally, on November 14, Senior Consultant Tina Cheplick and Theresa Esparrago Lieu will be in Los Angeles, CA for Upswell, presenting their work on organizational assessment tools. We hope this database, originally compiled for the Hewlett Foundation, can help organizations determine what they want and need out of an organizational assessment tool, thereby alleviating some of the burden of measuring organizational capacity from social change organizations.

We hope you will join us in these discussions of important, and often complex, issues this conference season. By learning together, we believe we can use data, learning, and strategy to support those working for a more socially just society for all.