How could evaluation societies remain relevant and useful?

I have been part of the evaluation system, amongst others, for over 15 years and have held memberships with the UK, European and American evaluation societies. Last year I attended the 15th European Evaluation Society’s (EES) Biennial Conference in Rimini, Italy; which gave us all much to discuss, as always. But this time it went beyond the usual topics.

Over time evaluators have been asked to be more than research or evaluation theories and methods experts. Calls to become better facilitators are common and there is a strong push to become foresight thinkers and AI-competent. In 2024, at the International Evaluation Group at the World Bank’s Conference “Future of evaluation: Charting a path in a changing development landscape”, Prof. Elliot Stern said he thinks evaluation will evolve away from “professionalisation” which implies an elite status, people with distinctive expertise and represents an individualistic model that makes monopolistic claims to exclusive bodies of knowledge. He went on to say that evaluation will become a “bridging occupation”, a transdisciplinary practice able to:

• Distil and exchange good practices across different fields
• Develop and disseminate process and engagement skills
• Facilitate ethical debates of locally-relevant ethical codes
• Assess the suitability of methods and techniques in different settings, and
• Work with interdisciplinary frameworks that enable synthesis of knowledge and findings. 

In other words, evaluators will also become knowledge brokers and managers. And yet, the EES conference left me, and other colleagues, feeling the dissonance between the language we use at work, with our partners and clients, and the focus and tone in evaluation spaces like this one. Moreover, many of us are moving away from these traditional conceptualisations of evaluation and what an evaluator is – and some have stopped going to evaluation conferences and registering as members of evaluation professional associations altogether. This is worrying given that many of these professional associations are keen to broaden their membership, focusing on making it more diverse and representative of a wider range of values, knowledge and ways of thinking. 

If I think about my journey, I too have shifted my identity over time to be more impactful and to better reflect my interests and values. I started my career defining myself as an evaluator and very quickly realised that I needed to be part of the strategy and programme design cycle to deliver more value to both organisations and people on the ground. While some of this involved formative evaluations and other foresight approaches, what I have found to be most effective is to be more relational, while being a good thought partner and knowledge broker. And I have found systems change facilitation a great addition to my practice. Furthermore, some years ago I co-authored a knowledge management book funded by UNICEF and I am now also working in equity, diversity and inclusion training and accompaniment for people and organisations – not as an evaluation lens or method but as a discipline in its own right. 

Therefore a key question emerges: How could professional evaluation societies better prepare and respond to these trends, shifting identities and emergent needs to remain relevant and useful? Here are some ideas:

• Rebalance the focus on dominant evaluation theories, methods and approaches – ensuring more focus is placed on relational practice, knowledge management and non-Euro-Western knowledge systems, approaches and methods. This should be reflected in the content of webinars, conferences and communications but also in the conference space and layout of sessions. For example, by setting up rooms as talking circles to encourage peer-learning and exchange, setting aside two slots of 1 hour each per day and during conference times to support networking and collaboration, and facilitating visits to local areas of interest to learn from their culture and history. In addition to this, for the European conference at least, it would be great to have sessions in other languages other than English which better reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of its attendees.
• Promote more learning from failure and humility. So often as evaluators, we advocate for and organise things like “Failed Fests” yet all we share in evaluation conferences, webinars and journals is only what we think worked or is innovative and attention-grabbing, failing to show the vulnerability and humility we ask of others when engaging in evaluation and learning. I would love to attend a Failed Fest evaluation conference or at least see ten percent of all sessions be of this nature. 
• Play a “bridging” role between more diverse disciplines. Many practitioners are intellectually curious, insights-driven, and good at spotting trends and making sound judgements without ever self-identifying as evaluators – we need to connect with them rather than trying to embed them into our current practice and being open to change evaluation as a result of this. 
• We need to continue evolving the language we use. Evaluation as a word has such a negative connotation and is now not very reflective of the wider types of activities, roles and values evaluators have.
• Finally, I also believe evaluation societies have a role to play in making the professional more equitable, diverse and inclusive. Here is a detailed piece on this if you want to find more.

Please reach out to add to this conversation and/or share more widely if anything resonated with you!