An Approach to Evaluation at The California Wellness Foundation

Since its earliest days, the Foundation has been committed to evaluation of its grantmaking. That commitment is reflected in four of our core values: Accountability, Stewardship, Excellence and Learning. We see ourselves as a learning organization, and we believe that evaluation is an important aspect of the process of continuous learning and program improvement.

Our approach to evaluation has evolved over time. Initially, we required each grant to have a formal evaluation component, often funded at a level equal to that of the project itself. We also matched community-based organizations with evaluators to help them meet our requirements. As our five strategic initiatives came on line, we made substantial (typically, multimillion-dollar) grants for external, objective evaluation of each of those grantmaking programs. Our first evaluations of that sort employed a “scientific” approach, with the primary goal of contributing to knowledge. 

Subsequent initiative evaluations have been shaped by a somewhat different set of goals. Our approach evolved from an attempt to “prove” to one that sought to “improve.” The Foundation has made it clear that although we are still concerned about tracking outcomes, our first priority has been to provide continuous feedback to our grantees to help them enhance program effectiveness. We have also acknowledged the importance of building the capacity of grantees to conduct their own data-gathering and evaluation activities as a key component of the ultimate sustainability of their work. 

More recently, we have begun to conduct retrospective “cluster” evaluations of groups of grants made for a similar purpose. Some of those evaluations have been commissioned from investigators outside the Foundation, but we are increasingly taking on those analyses ourselves as an integral part of our grantmaking cycle. We have made it an institutional priority to dedicate time and energy to postgrant analysis and synthesis of lessons learned in order to inform our future work.

Lest this leave the reader with the impression that we have “solved” the dilemma of how best to evaluate our work and that of our grantees, let me pause here for a disclaimer. We are still very much a “work in progress” on this topic as on others. The purpose of this introductory piece is to share some of our thinking to date and to provide some context for the evaluation products that will be posted in this section of our website. All of this information is shared in the spirit of mutual learning. We welcome your comments on the specific reports as well as on this contextual piece.

Tom David, Executive Vice President
The California Wellness Foundations