The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) and Center for Evaluation Innovation (CEI) have released today a new research report representing the most comprehensive data collection effort to date on evaluation practices at foundations. The report, titled Benchmarking Foundation Evaluation Practices, shares data on crucial topics such as foundations’ evaluation staffing and structures, investment in evaluation work, and the usefulness of evaluation information.
This report seeks to provide benchmarking data that will be useful to foundation leaders as they seek to better understand the choices of their peers and think more deeply about their own evaluation goals and strategies. When thinking about questions related to evaluation, considering data about what other foundations are doing can be informative and important.
The data is based on survey responses from individuals who were either the most senior evaluation or program staff at foundations in the U.S. and Canada giving at least $10 million annually, or members of the Evaluation Roundtable, a network of foundation leaders in evaluation convened by CEI.