Requerimiento de Recursos para el Desarrollo de los Procesos Productivos

Few would challenge the value of learning, but it is easy to underestimate the time, tools, and resources needed to do it well. Community change work neces- sarily involves many stakeholders: community residents, nonprofit leaders, pub- lic and private funders, private developers, policy advocates, and so forth. The management challenge is to keep all the stakeholders moving forward together with shared understanding and accountability. The learning challenge is to de- sign vehicles for sharing information—and for using that information to guide ac- tion—that produce agreed-upon outcomes consistent with a shared framework. The biggest obstacle to learning, for both evaluators and community change participants, is time. Time to examine and reflect is often trumped by the need to act. Even when learning structures were in place, for example, Skillman Founda- tion staff and partners found that the pace and complexity of the work led them to use these meetings to discuss pressing operational issues rather than strategic decisions or lessons (Brown, Colombo, & Hughes, 2009). “Relentless execution,” however, leaves little room for the “experimentation and reflection vital to sus- tainable success” (Edmondson, 2008).

The following recommendations help to maximize learning:

e Share data. Sharing data in a timely fashion, in formats that different

audiences can digest, and in ways that respect confidentiality is challeng- ing—even in a collaborative culture that values dialogue and reflection. It often takes significant investment to create user-friendly systems for consolidating data and tracking outcomes. (Communities of Opportunity in San Francisco, for example, spent several years on this task.) It takes time for a local data intermediary to negotiate data agreements with vari- ous agencies and build the capacity of community groups, advocates, and nonprofits to value data and use it well. Learning when and how to share different kinds of data can also be difficult; historically, the balance be- tween the risks and rewards of “going public” has tended to tip toward privacy (Hamilton et al., 2005) or has generated public products that are so sterile or self-promotional that their value is limited.

Pressures to be more transparent and to learn from mistakes, how- ever, have sparked reflection and sharing within the philanthropic sec- tor and beyond (Giloth & Gewirtz, 2009). If all partners agree up front on how indicators of success will be measured, when disappointing data emerge the conversation shifts more easily from assigning blame to im- proving partners’ collective performance and revising the framework’s assumptions about how to achieve good results.

Participants Reflect, Learn, and Take Action

In Hope Community, a CDC devoted to community revitalization and empow- erment, the evaluator moved from being an external consultant to a part-time internal staff person who helped coworkers gather and interpret data, provid- ed timely program feedback, offered training and support individually and in groups, and facilitated larger discussions for mutual reflection.

After 18 months, the evaluator reports that “Hope Community has broad- ened their preexisting respect for ‘reflection’ and transformed it into more con- crete, more systemic, and more flexible ways to learn, plan, and react. Regular documentation is now well established.” Frontline staff are more accountable for their work while understanding more clearly the links between it and Hope’s broader vision, the board and staff are more aligned in their understanding, and outside funders are benefiting from more concrete data and Hope’s com- mitment to learning for continuous improvement.

e Establish vehicles for translating learning into action. Learning by doing only works if learning is translated into action (e.g., new skills, improved practice, reformulated theories, new strategies and partner- ships; see Giloth & Gewirtz, 2009). Many vehicles can serve this purpose for different actors. For example, foundations have engaged grantees in “ongoing discussions with structured learning agendas, where funders and grantees work together to compile, analyze, synthesize, and inte- grate information for mutual benefit” (Chin, 2006). Funder collabora- tives (GrantCraft, 2009), peer learning groups, and broad communities of practice, among others, can help participants distill and share lessons, specify how to translate lessons into practice, and identify necessary supports (e.g., technical assistance to implement a new tool or practice, coaching, site visits to like-minded sites, training and professional de- velopment; see Trent & Chavis, 2009). The conditions under which this translation is most likely to occur are fairly well known: development of a group culture that incentivizes learning and adaptation, leadership that values and models candid exchange, and clear and realistic expectations for who will take new actions and with what supports.

e Create thoughtful links between evaluation and communication. Ef-

fective internal communications help keep diverse partners engaged, focused on shared outcomes, and less vulnerable to mission drift and fatigue. External communication can build local momentum, leverage financial support, and disseminate lessons to the broader field. Both rely in part on information generated by evaluation, particularly reports on progress and success. Each partner uses data in its own way for its own purposes (e.g., to raise funds, attract new partners, reassure trustees, persuade policy makers, report to community residents), which can cre- ate inconsistencies or misunderstandings in the absence of a larger co- herent narrative.

In particular, the “campaign” quality of communications can pres- sure or tempt evaluators to overpromise, interpret data prematurely or in the most positive light, and/or develop scorecard indicators with tenuous connection to meaningful results. One way to maintain the in- tegrity of evaluation is to specify who can release or publish what find- ings, when, and with what kind of review among partners. Close infor- mal working relationships among the evaluator, the evaluator’s funders, and those charged with communications (and sometimes fund-raising) can also promote consistent messages. Another “balancing” vehicle is a group with expertise in both evaluation and communications that peri- odically reviews evaluation materials and helps frame them for different

audiences. The more all these strategies exist within a culture of critical inquiry, a collective understanding of the theory behind the work, and a commitment to invest and work together over the long term, the greater the likelihood that evaluation and communications function well together.