We are at crossroads when it comes to evaluation, its purpose, and how it is used. Before the pandemic and into the recovery phase, evaluation has been largely used to artificially enforce “accountability” and maintain a transactional relationship between funders and non-profit organizations. Demand for “accountability”; expectation to do more with less; and reporting on impacts are phrases that keep leaders of non-profits, including B3s awake at night. These phrases are particularly disempowering in an environment of transactional relationship between funders and non-profits. You might ask, what does this have to do with evaluation? Everything!Let’s think and reflect deeply on these phrases: Demand for accountability – who is demanding accountability and whose interest is fulfilled by meeting that accountability? Expectation to do more with less – who is expecting or promising to do more with less? Reporting on impacts – who is defining impact and/or how is impact defined and understood?Evaluation is neither neutral nor objective and in a transactional relationship between funders and non-profit organizations, its sole purpose becomes keeping the transactional relationship in place.

Filippo Argenti