Elevating Community Voice in the Next Generation of Evidence

Abstract Information: Shaping questions, collecting and synthesizing information, and sharing results are critical parts of an equitable evidence-building journey. Each of these steps is made more relevant by gathering input and feedback from communities served, both practitioners and their participants, and elevating what they have to say, their “community voice.” Moreover, inviting participation and sharing results with the people one seeks to serve may also infuse the process of building evidence with respect and dignity, critical to growing community trust. However, communities are often excluded from evidence building and use. This might be because funders, researchers, and policymakers aren’t well equipped to deal with the added complexity that meaningful inclusion requires, because they assume community stakeholders aren’t interested in engaging with data and evidence, or because they perceive a false divide between community voice and rigorous evidence. Our multi-paper session will explore how local governments, philanthropic funders, nonprofits, community leaders, and researchers can shift toward more inclusive and democratic evidence practices that are relevant and responsive to the populations they serve. The papers are drawn from Next Generation Evidence: Strategies for More Equitable Social Impact (Brookings Institution Press, 2024), which delves into the critical role of data and evidence in understanding the needs of communities and supporting practitioners in making impactful decisions. The book features innovative thinking from leaders across policy, philanthropy, research, community, and practice, who together lay out a vision for a stronger, more equitable data and evidence ecosystem that centers the voices of people and communities. Each presenter is a contributing author to Next Generation Evidence and brings unique insights into how stakeholders from government, philanthropy, and research can work alongside community partners to build evidence and strengthen outcomes. These perspectives include: Carrie Cihak, King County, WA: A local government practitioner working with communities to build evidence and equity. Dallas Nelson, Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation: A Lakota leader working to advance Indigenous data sovereignty and Indigenous narratives around data, language, and education. Peter York, BCT Partners: A data scientist leveraging new methods (including AI) to make evidence more actionable and inclusive for practitioners and communities. Veronica Olazabal, BHP Foundation: A funder and evaluator working to reimagine what responsible evaluation practice looks like, including whose voices are included and how. Dan Cardinali, Project Evident Board of Directors: A nonprofit leader whose work focuses on how evidence can be generated and used to build trust with communities and help them steward the environments where they live. Spanning these diverse perspectives are a number of common themes and questions that speakers will address, including: Where in the cycle of evidence building is it best to draw in community input and loop back to communities with findings? What processes and tools are useful for doing so? How do these practices strengthen decision making and implementation? Session attendees will leave with a better understanding of why elevating community voice in evidence building and use is critical, what it looks like in practice, and how they might approach it in their own work.