At a Planning and Evaluation Workshop given in Lisbon for the Portuguese nonprofit sector by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Donzelina Barroso and Pooja Joshi O'Hanlan, Andrew Barnett, Director of the Foundation's UK Branch, gave a presentation on 'Evaluation in European Foundations: Trends and Perspectives'. In his presentation he described the UK Branch's recent experience of designing an evaluation system. This has been a collaborative process involving everyone at the UK Branch, who evolved the evaluation framework with the assistance of Paul Owens of BOP Consulting.

The framework sets out the purpose clearly: to account for investment decisions by linking these explicitly to the aims and objectives of the Foundation and to clear performance measures, to monitor progress in delivering against aims and objectives and to assess and understand the impact of the Foundation's investments. No less importantly, the Foundation wants to capture learning for the purpose of continuous improvement and wider benefit.

Guidance notes have been prepared for the Foundation's partners and guidance on partnership working is also being developed. As Andrew Barnett explained, "This connects to our continuing thinking about how best to disseminate the learning from projects - what works and what doesn't, and ensure a continuing legacy after we have moved on to pursue other objectives."

Download Andrew Barnett's presentation, 'Evaluation in European Foundations: Trends and Perspectives'
Download a PDF of 'Measuring Social Value: The gap between policy and practice' from the DEMOS website

The workshop was organised by the Centro Português de Fundações and held at the Fundação Luso-Americana.