How Philanthropic Collaboratives Measure, Evaluate, and Learn
In this article, we shine a light on promising practices for how philanthropic collaboratives can effectively measure, evaluate, and learn in pursuit of greater impact. This article is based on two dozen interviews with collaborative leaders (plus informal conversations with dozens more), donors, grantees, and measurement experts; our survey research over the past three years, including nearly 280 philanthropic collaboratives; a review of publicly available reports from over 50 collaboratives; and a review of philanthropy measurement literature, such as Grantmakers for Effective Organizations’ Shifting the Evaluation Paradigm: The Equitable Evaluation Framework and Co-Impact’s Learning, Measurement, and Evaluation Guidebook. For this research, we defined collaboratives as entities that either pool or channel resources from multiple donors to nonprofits; we call them “collaboratives” and “collaborative funds” in this report, and occasionally refer to them as “funds” or “platforms” in other publications.
