S05_ Evaluating Philanthropy in Context: Relational Dynamics, Accountability, and Institutional Environments
S07_ Re-thinking Evaluation Professionalism for Vibrant Democracies: Ethics, Values, and Systemic Capacity in Institutions
S05_ Evaluating Philanthropy in Context: Relational Dynamics, Accountability, and Institutional Environments
S07_ Re-thinking Evaluation Professionalism for Vibrant Democracies: Ethics, Values, and Systemic Capacity in Institutions
S06_ Evaluation for Transformative Democratic Futures: Addressing the polycrisis through systemic learning, power shifts and regeneration
Strand leads: Ian Goldman, May Pettigrew
Rationale and Objectives
The objective of this strand is to develop shared clarity and collective solidarity on how new methods and theoretically informed approaches to future fit evaluation, competences, systems transformations and the leverage of enabling environments including centres of power and policy, can support transformative practice.
It builds on futures work using the 3 Horizons - including practical cases of transformative practice, led by the IEAc and the Global Evaluation Agenda 2.0, with a joint global coalition including the IEAc, EES, IOCE, EvalPartners and its affiliates, regional VOPEs and EvalforEarth. The strand draws on collaborative work throughout 2026, including a special issue of the Journal of Multidisciplinary Evaluation on the transformational imperative (July 2026) and will be shared and tested at the conference, with feedback and co-creative inputs on how to strengthen transformation that respects the rights of persons, Peoples, and all of nature, explore questions of values, democratic participation and power dynamics and how to build the networks needed for wider impact. Collaboration with cognate other strands supporting equity, local voice and downward accountability are welcome.
S6a: Transforming Evaluative Practice to Address the Polycrisis
Zenda Ofir, consultant; Ian Kendrick, consultant; Andrealisa Belzer, IEAC; Khalil Bitar, EvalPartners
This panel session examines emerging approaches to how evaluation can contribute to transformation. It problematises the current state of the polycrisis, and how the underlying systemic causes are undermining effective democratic processes and governance. It builds on work over the last two years on envisaging a future for the evaluation field which contributes to regeneration, rather than just maintaining the destructive status quo. The work used the 3 Horizons approach as well as development of the Global Evaluation Agenda. It draws on work by a coalition of partners including the International Evaluation Academy, EvalPartners, IOCE, the continental VOPEs, IDEAS and EvalforEarth to take us towards this aspirational future.
The session introduces the work that underlies all sessions in the strand, and what transformation means in practice, taking us towards the aspirational future (Horizon 3). The session will engage participants in critical reflection on what shifts in our thinking and practice are needed now as global crises accelerate and how we as evaluators can transform our work to meet these challenges (through Horizon 2).
It explores ten qualities of transformational initiatives that can help the field move forward to support the transformational imperative - those that are positive (H2+), and those initiatives that are captured by the status quo (H1) and so are H2-. These include Quality 1: Challenges dominant thinking and narratives to unlock new solutions, to Quality 10:Spreads, persists and evolves without losing its core purpose, which a professional development workshop explores in depth. Participants will be invited to interact with the model and identify examples of transformational initiatives that they are aware of.
S6b: Repositioning Evaluation in Centres of Power to Support Regenerative Approaches
May Pettigrew, EES; Geeta Batra, GEF; Nancy McPherson, recently of Rockefeller Foundation; Ascuncion Barajas, CDTI; Juan Andres Ligero, consultant; Miche Ouedrago, AfrEA; Martin Weber, European Court of Auditors.
This session explores how commissioners, funders and evaluators can go beyond accountability for interventions, to focus on the learning and agility needed to address the polycrisis and support community-led approaches. It also asks how decision makers can use evaluation strategically to support planning and implementation.
This fishbowl session will examine functional silos within governments and agencies, how power needs to shift to address underlying system challenges, and to engage learning from Southern, Indigenous, and marginalised perspectives. It will explore examples of evaluative work which is focusing on the polycrisis, and is influencing decision making. This requires revising traditional top down practices (e.g. linear design frameworks, indicator choice, narrow focus on programmes rather than systems, weak involvement of those affected). We explore what this means for the evaluation marketplace.
Practical examples will be shared of commissioning evaluations with a transformative effect including from the GEF, CDTI in Spain. We will have reflections from the African experience and from the European Court of Auditors.
S6c: Embedding Evaluation in Organisational Processes
Ian Goldman, IEAc; Bridget Dillon, independent consultant; Kai Brand-Jakobsen, NOREC; Lisandro Martin, World Bank; Irene Guijt, independent consultant
This fishbowl session will focus on government, civil society, private sector, and academia, to examine how organisations can transform to be agile, anticipate and respond to emergent and unstable futures, building on evaluative thinking. Participants will emerge inspired with pratical ideas of how to reposition evaluative practices in their organisation,from an orphan separated from management and feared, to embedded across the organisational cycle, and in ways that explicitly contribute to transformation.
The session explores the modalities of embedding evaluative thinking and practices across organisational and policy cycles, from agenda setting, diagnosis, design, implementation to assessing outcomes. Cases covered in the fishbowl include Belgian police using evidence on radicalisation, Oxfam and African examples, with reflections from the World Bank. Small group work will then explore how blocks can be addressed.
S6d: AI is good for Business as Usual. What about transformation? - Solution Focused Session
Silva Ferretti, independent consultant
AI is reshaping evaluation faster than the field is ready to critically examine it. While most discussions focus on what AI can do, this session asks whether AI supports transformation or simply reinforces existing systems more efficiently? Left to its own logic, AI is extraordinarily good at business as usual. It replicates bias, amplifies existing power, and defaults to the dominant framing — clustering around what is already known, mirroring what the field has already settled on, accelerating convergence where productive ambiguity was needed. This is the central challenge for anyone trying to use AI in transformational work.
Using the Three Horizons framework, we explore AI's role in the contested transition zone where innovations either get captured by the old order (H2-) or open genuine pathways to new ways of thinking and practice. Drawing on practical experience from the IEAc's Three Horizons Initiative on evaluation transformation, the session reflects on the intentional use of AI—not to replace evaluative judgement, but to challenge assumptions, surface hidden patterns, and stimulate deeper reflection about power, values, and change.
The session invites participants to critically examine how they use AI in their own practice. Through provocations, live discussion, and interactive reflection, participants will explore how AI can support imagination, visioning, and transformative thinking while resisting its tendency to reproduce dominant narratives. The aim is to leave participants with a clearer understanding of what it takes to use AI as a tool for transformation rather than business as usual.
S6e: From Principles to Power Shifts: Embedding Equity Throughout the Evaluation Cycle for Transformative Democratic Futures
Sonal Zaveri, GENSA; Shweta Anand, GENSA; Bijita Devsharma, GENSA; Cecilia Milesi, Global Change Center; Tarini Shipurkar, Praxis
If evaluation is to contribute meaningfully to vibrant democracies in responding to today's polycrisis, equity must move beyond aspiration to become an operational principle embedded throughout the evaluation process. This panel presents a practice-oriented framework for integrating equity across the evaluation lifecycle—from conceptual framing and commissioning through design, data collection, analysis, reporting, and institutional learning.
Evaluation has long been shaped by theories, standards, and practices developed in the Global North, often applied without sufficient adaptation to local contexts. These frameworks influence what counts as credible evidence, whose knowledge is valued, and who participates in evaluation, limiting its potential to advance equity and social justice. While equity, inclusion, and decolonisation have received increasing attention, far less focus has been placed on the role of donors and commissioners, whose funding and governance decisions profoundly shape evaluation practice. The Moving the Needle: Equity in Evaluations Toolkit addresses this gap by enabling commissioners to critically examine how equity is reflected—or overlooked—across policy, organisational, and operational levels in diverse institutional and geopolitical contexts. At a time of democratic backsliding, shrinking civic space, and widening inequality, strengthening equity-centred evaluation has become more urgent than ever.
The panel explores how power is exercised throughout the evaluation process—from commissioning and design to evidence generation, interpretation, and use—and what changes are needed for equity-centred evaluation to become institutionalised as standard professional practice rather than remaining dependent on individual champions or isolated projects.
S6f: Values, Mindsets, and Competencies for Transformational Evaluation Practice (Co-hosted with Professionalisation Strand)
Scott Chaplowe, Candice Morkel, Thania de la Garza, Baraka Mfilinge (EvalYouth representative)
This interactive session introduces eleven evaluation competencies designed to orient evaluation toward transformational change—responding to the polycrisis of climate instability, deepening inequality, rapid technological disruption, and other escalating global challenges. It reaches beyond evaluators to the wider evaluation ecosystem—those who commission, manage, use, and build capacity for evaluation—recognizing evaluation as a shared and institutional practice, not merely a technical one. Rather than presenting a prescriptive framework, the session invites critical engagement: participants, including young and emerging evaluators, will reflect on the competencies, values, and mindsets needed to engage with complexity, power, AI, and futures thinking, and to sustain that engagement in the face of uncertainty and even despair. They will diagnose which competencies are present, partial, or absent in their own contexts, use peer dialogue to explore systemic causes, and leave with a concrete personal commitment. The session draws on a global foresight process and collaborative synthesis published in the Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation (Chaplowe et al., 2026, forthcoming)
S6g: Creating Supportive Enabling Environments for Transformation
Asela Kalugampitiya, UNFPA; Chelladurai Solomon, IOCE; Thokozile Molaiwa, DPME; Sven Harten, Heather Britt, Andrealisa Belzer, IEAC.
This session builds on the previous six sessions, as well as other sessions in the conference and shares how we can achieve an enabling environment that supports using evaluation to support transformation. It draws on elements which exist, such as South Africa's recently revised National Evaluation Policy Framework and the Just Energy Transition MEL Framework. The intention is that participants feel they are part of a mutual support network on transformation and are inspired to take this work forward, with some pointers for their opportunities for action and how to build on transformational initiatives.
This solutions-focused session examines how evidence can be situated in management and policy cultures to enable transformative action, how to support local voices and incentivise learning and change. It draws from the enabling environment elements such as institutionalising national evaluation systems and policies; recognising that evaluation must promote values and mindsets that support equity, social, justice, and sustainable development; the need for coherence across policy areas to both embed evaluative practice and to support systems-wide change; ensuring power shifts and that evaluation policies and practices recognize, protect, integrate and valorise non-Western, community/local and Indigenous knowledge systems and worldviews. We need to recognise the understanding that communities and users have of their context and services, the crises facing them, as well as potential ways forward, which should form the bedrock of our practice and policy directions.
