D1: Reinventing Evaluation for Social Innovation and Change
Session Designer
Hallie Preskill, FSG
Session Description
Leading grantmakers have been pushing the field to adopt more catalytic and systems-focused approaches to grantmaking. While this transformation is beginning to take hold — as evidenced by an increasing number of funders engaging in advocacy and policy work, cross-sector collaboration and systems change — the sector’s approach to evaluation is not keeping pace. It seems funders are still struggling to find an evaluation approach that is well suited for social innovation in complex environments. In this session, participants will engage in learning, reflection and dialogue about “developmental evaluation,” the experiences of grantmakers who are implementing the approach in their work, and the ways in which it could add value to their current evaluation portfolio.
Conference Theme
Evaluation and Learning
Speakers
![[photo]](https://8ca84662c5b8f0cff50d-4baaaf97d63fd7b01243e1b1c57f0cc1.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/129/profile_b243ce1d6519ca90abc4dbf108b7d7b7.png "Hallie Preskill, FSG")
Hallie Preskill, FSG
Title
Executive Director, Strategic Learning and Evaluation Center
Speaker Biography
Hallie Preskill is the executive director of FSG’s Strategic Learning & Evaluation Center. In her role as a senior advisor, she works on a wide variety of strategic evaluation and learning projects with foundations, nonprofits, corporations and government organizations. Prior to joining FSG, Preskill spent 20 years in academia, teaching graduate level courses in program evaluation, training design and development, organizational learning, appreciative inquiry and consulting. She has written several books including: "Reframing Evaluation through Appreciative Inquiry" (2006), "Building Evaluation Capacity: 72 Activities for Teaching and Training" (2005), and "Evaluation in Organizations: A Systematic Approach to Enhancing Learning, Performance & Change" (2001, 2009).
Preskill was the 2007 president of the American Evaluation Association. She received the American Evaluation Association's Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Award for Outstanding Professional Practice in 2002 and the University of Illinois Distinguished Alumni Award in 2004.
![[photo]](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/8dc8c2fb087672bcb6fdfa5fa49017ef.png?d=https://proposalspace.com/images/no_photo.png&r=PG&s=50 "Mayur Patel, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation")
Mayur Patel, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Title
Vice President for Strategy and Assessment
Speaker Biography
Mayur Patel works as vice president of strategy and assessment at Knight Foundation, where he is responsible for aiding ongoing strategy development, and assessing the impact and effectiveness of the foundation’s efforts. Patel was previously a project associate with the Global Economic Governance Programme at the University of Oxford and a fellow with the World Trade Organization in Geneva. He served as a consultant to Oxfam's offices in Kenya and the UK and as a trade and investment policy adviser to Realizing Rights. He previously worked with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Zimbabwe on issues of civic engagement and parliamentary support.
A Rhodes Scholar, Patel has a doctorate in international development from Oxford and a bachelor’s in international relations from LSE. He is a junior fellow with the EVA Business and Policy Forum based in Helsinki and a 2011 Independent Sector American Express NGEN Fellow.