Why engage in evaluation? After all, even if fairly modest sums are allocated for that purpose, those are still dollars that could otherwise be used for grants to agencies to deliver health services. In her introductory chapter to the Council on Foundations’ 1993 volume on Evaluation for Foundations, Barbara Kehrer outlines several reasons why foundations might invest in evaluation, among them: accountability; program improvement; assessment of program impact; dissemination of innovative programs; and increasing the state of knowledge.

Accountability is frequently framed in terms of the grantees’ activities; i.e., did they deliver the goods as promised? One of the most important principles of The California Wellness Foundation is a commitment to good stewardship of the Foundation’s resources. In other words, our impetus for evaluation is to examine whether we are making the most effective use possible of our grant dollars. That constitutes our “bottom line” for accountability. 

Some contend that foundations that have resulted from health care conversions should be held to a higher standard of accountability than foundations created from other sources, since their assets are in essence derived from “public shareholders.” While we would not necessarily agree with that argument, this is an organization that takes very seriously its community responsibility as a charitable institution. One could argue that if our mission is to improve the health of Californians, then we are ultimately accountable to the communities served by our grantees. If it is conducted appropriately, evaluation can be a useful tool to help fulfill that commitment.

In an article some years ago in Foundation News, Humphrey Doermann (then president of the Bush Foundation) suggested four potential levels of evaluation for foundations:

• The overall functioning and impact of the foundation itself. This is perhaps the rarest form of foundation-sponsored evaluation, yet it is why we conduct periodic surveys of our grantees and applicants. It is also one reason why we have instituted the Reflections publication series, to communicate some of our lessons learned with the field. Those who have commented on that series have frequently noted how unusual it is for a foundation to openly share such a self-assessment with a broader audience.
• Impact on a particular field of endeavor. Somewhat further down the road, one could imagine us commissioning an assessment of the cumulative impact of our grantmaking in our various priority areas on their respective fields of interest across California.
• Accomplishments of a particular grants program. This is why we have evaluation grantees for each of our initiatives. It is also one of the reasons why we have had Advisory Committees for most of our initiatives, to give us independent feedback on their implementation and impact. We have also commissioned retrospective analyses of groups of grants within our Special Projects program, and plan to do more of these in the future for our other priority areas.
• Effectiveness of individual grants. The primary vehicle here is typically monitoring by the program officers, with the outcomes analyzed in a closeout report, a summary of which is reported to the Board. If the magnitude of a grant warrants it, a special evaluation component might be built in or commissioned by an outside investigator.