127 - Working in flexible evaluation partnerships to promote equity among small evaluation firms and in our practice: The story of one such partnership

Abstract Information: Small evaluation firms and independent evaluators can offer evaluation commissioners uniquely skilled and experienced teams, when we join together in flexible partnerships. Teams developed from these flexible partnerships can bring together geographic and cultural knowledge; familiarity working with different population segments; language capabilities; and methodological expertise; among other evaluation assets that respond to evaluation commissioners’ needs. Yet, it takes special skills for evaluators to quickly become a team that’s capable of working seamlessly together. And it takes risk taking on the part of evaluation commissioners to engage with such a team, since their ability to work together may be untested. During this session, we - such an evaluation team and our funder - will share our story. Our funder will describe the criteria his team used to select us, what caused them to select us, over a large evaluation firm, and what it is like to work with us. We will share our experience coming together; building a team of equal partners; establishing team practices that promote equity among us; and navigating our relationships, as we learn more about each other’s skills and the funder’s needs. We will talk about how we have worked together to overcome differences and reach consensus, when we have brought different perspectives to issues we needed to address. Finally, we will talk about collaboration tools and processes that serve us well. Through this session, we hope to encourage more evaluators to try out our model and more commissioners to take a chance on teams like ours.

Relevance Statement: Traditionally, evaluation commissioners have partnered with well-established and often larger evaluation firms. However, when funders seek to emphasize cultural responsiveness, equity, and learning, they may sometimes find that the orientation, skills, and experience they seek may not fully reside in one organization. In such cases, they may find that smaller evaluation firms that engage with each other in flexible partnerships may be better positioned to respond to their evaluation needs. Smaller evaluation firms bring with them evaluation skills; geographic, culture, and language capabilities; and unique orientations. When partnering, they often have the privilege of bringing together a group of senior evaluators who can draw upon their decades of experience to inform their work. If they frequently collaborate within flexible teams, then they also bring the skills required to quickly form a team and establish processes that can help them work well together. But practically speaking, what does this look like and how does it work? During this session, we - evaluators with significant experience working within such flexible partnerships and a funder with experience working with teams such as ours - will share what we have learned so far about how to make this work well. We will discuss how we have built relationships with our funder in which we are all engaged, as well as how we have addressed the challenges of building a team quickly and coordinating across cultures, languages, and time zones. We will talk about principles, processes, and structures that we have put in place to embrace equity within our team. Our principles include transparency, honesty, mutual respect, consideration, and open-mindedness, among others. Our processes include how we run meetings, make decisions, and engage with our funder. Our structures include our decision-making structure, as well as how we have structured our team around our evaluative activities. Reflecting on our experiences working as part of flexible partnerships and working with them, we will offer some lessons learned that may be useful to others interested in engaging in such relationships. We will also leave ample time for those participating in our session to share their experiences working in similar ways.