Democracy and Governance
Natalie Trisilla
Director, Evidence and Learning
International Republican Institute, United States
Natalie Trisilla
Director, Evidence and Learning
International Republican Institute, United States
Anna Chukhno, n/a
Deputy Director, Evidence and Learning Practice
IRI, District of Columbia, United States
Adrienne Lemon, n/a
Director, Institutional Learning Team
SFCG, United States
David Connolly (he/him/his)
Director, Learning, Evaluation and Research
USIP, United States
Diego Benitez (he/him/his)
Program Officer
Learning, Evaluation, and Research, USIP
Location: Room 309/310
Abstract Information: Stories and storytelling are an important way for practitioners to make sense of evaluation data, connect with audiences and build buy-in with stakeholders to take action. While collecting stories enables evaluators to develop an in-depth perspective, incorporating a broader view on individual stories through strategy, evaluation and results frameworks can help connect these complementary perspectives. The International Republican Institute (IRI), Search for Common Ground (SFCG) and United States Institute of Peace (USIP) will share their experiences using storytelling to make sense of, build buy-in and complement organizational frameworks. In particular, the panelists will discuss approaches that each organization has taken to incorporate stories into such frameworks and use stories to engage and build buy-in among stakeholders. This session will be insightful for internal evaluators or evaluators working with organizations to develop or evaluate organizational strategy, theories of change, results frameworks, or similar efforts.
Relevance Statement: Stories bring richness and help ground evaluation findings and reporting. When evaluating organizational strategies, storytelling can help different audiences make sense of the high-level strategy, evaluation, and results frameworks. However, systematizing and organizing such stories in a comprehensive framework can be challenging. How do we center the experiences of those evaluated and maintain rigorous approaches? How do we collect stories in a way that honors individual experiences and also organize and analyze them in a way that reveals cumulative lessons? Strategy-level evaluations and organizational-level results frameworks can be a valuable tool for organizing stories and other data, and for developing and evaluating systematic strategies to achieving results. However, designing and implementing such frameworks can be challenging, as it involves building buy-in and consensus among various stakeholders on the vision, purpose and use of such frameworks. Helping stakeholders make sense of such frameworks can also be a challenge, since the frameworks can be perceived as too high-level to meaningfully encapsulate on the ground experiences. Stories and storytelling can be used to overcome these challenges, to help different stakeholders zoom in and zoom out and help connect these complementary perspectives. The three panelists, who represent organizations in various stages of design and implementation of organization-wide frameworks, will discuss their experiences incorporating stories and storytelling to build buy-in, consensus and give meaning to high-level frameworks. This topic is relevant to the evaluation community to explore the interplay between in-depth stories and a broad view of organization-wide strategies and results. The panel will contribute to this field of knowledge by sharing concrete ways each organization addressed the interplay and balance of these complementary viewpoints.
Presenter: David Connolly (he/him/his) – USIP
Presenter: Diego Benitez (he/him/his) – Learning, Evaluation, and Research, USIP
Presenter: Natalie Trisilla – International Republican Institute
Presenter: Anna Chukhno, n/a – IRI
Presenter: Adrienne Lemon, n/a – SFCG