W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Framework for Evaluation

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation places a high value on evaluation and has established the following principles to help guide evaluation work.

Strengthen projects: Our goal is to improve the well being of people. Evaluation furthers this goal by providing ongoing, systematic information that strengthens projects during their life cycles, and, whenever possible, outcome data to assess the extent of change. The evaluation effort should leave an organization stronger and more able to use such an evaluation when outside support ends.

Use multiple approaches: We support multidisciplinary approaches to problem solving. Evaluation methods should include a range of techniques to address important project questions.

Design evaluation to address real issues: We believe community-based organizations should ground their evaluations in the real issues of their respective communities. Therefore, evaluation efforts should also be community based and contextual (based on local circumstances and issues). The primary purpose is to identify problems and opportunities in the project's real communities, and to provide staff and stakeholders with reliable information from which to address problems and build on strengths and opportunities.

Create a participatory process: Just as people participate in project activities, people must participate in project evaluation. The best evaluations value multiple perspectives and involve a representation of people who care about the project. Effective evaluations also prepare organizations to use evaluation as an ongoing function of management and leadership.

Allow for flexibility: We encourage flexibility in the way projects are designed, implemented, and modified. Many Kellogg Foundation-funded projects are not discrete programs, but complex, comprehensive efforts aimed at systemic community change. Therefore, evaluation approaches must not be rigid and prescriptive, or it will be difficult to document the incremental, complex, and often subtle changes that occur over the life of an initiative. Instead, evaluation plans should take an emergent approach, adapting and adjusting to the needs of an evolving and complex project.

Build capacity: Evaluation should be concerned not only with specific outcomes, but also with the skills, knowledge, and perspectives acquired by the individuals who are involved with the project. We encourage ongoing self-reflection and dialogue on the part of every person involved with evaluation in order to reach increasingly sophisticated understandings of the projects being evaluated. Specifically, the Foundation expects that:

• everyone involved in project evaluation spends time thinking about and discussing how personal assumptions and beliefs affect his or her philosophy of evaluation; and
  
  
• everyone (particularly those in leadership positions, such as project directors, evaluators, board members, Kellogg program directors) reflects on the values and politics embedded in the press, and honestly examines how these influence what is focused on and what is missed; who is heard and not heard; how interpretations are made; what conclusions are drawn; and how they are presented.

Our vision for evaluation is rooted in the conviction that project evaluation and project management are inextricably linked. In fact, we believe that "good evaluation" is nothing more than "good thinking."

Effective evaluation is not an "event" that occurs at the end of a project, but is an ongoing process which helps decision makers better understand the project; how it is impacting participants, partner agencies and the community; and how it is being influenced/impacted by both internal and external factors. Thinking of evaluation tools in this way allows you to collect and analyze important data for decision making throughout the life of a project: from assessing community needs prior to designing a project, to making connections between project activities and intended outcomes, to making mid-course changes in program design, to providing evidence to funders that yours is an effort worth supporting.

We also believe that evaluation should not be conducted simply to prove that a project worked, but also to improve the way it works. Therefore, do not view evaluation only as an accountability measuring stick imposed on projects, but rather as a management and learning tool for projects, for the Foundation, and for practitioners in the field who can benefit from the experiences of other projects.