23 - Let's Learn From and Support One Another: Lessons from Internal Evaluators in Building Culture of Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation (CREE) in an Environmental Organization

Abstract Information: Mass Audubon is a conservation organization that has made a recent investment in program impact by creating an internal evaluator position in the Education and Engagement Department. Internal evaluators are in the unique position to evaluate the impact of their organization’s work with cultural responsiveness, minimal bias, staff buy-in, and transparency. While it is imperative to approach internal evaluation in these ways, they can be challenging to achieve for myriad reasons including organization politics, fear of being judged, and resistance to change. Furthermore, organizational leadership may have traditional views on evaluation as a means for mining big data. In 2021, I became the first internal evaluator in a 120+ year old conservation organization. I have found that slowly and intentionally building an ethos of culturally responsive and inclusive evaluation amongst the program staff has been the most important aspect of our evaluation work thus far. Establishing a culturally responsive lens to impact evaluation at my organization is still very much in its early stages, though we are now collecting, analyzing, and making decisions based on more qualitative data than ever before. It is my intention in this roundtable session to share my experiences in hopes they can be beneficial to others both inside and outside of the field of environmental programs. More importantly, I will listen to and learn from participants about what efforts resulted in wins and those that fall into the categories of “not-yet-wins” or “learn from my mistake!” We will begin to explore culturally responsive and equitable evaluation (CREE) practices, how they can be applied in our areas of work. The plan is to continue the conversation after the session and beyond the conference, perhaps by forming an informal professional learning community in which we continue to support one another whether we are newcomers to the field of evaluation, internal evaluators, environmental program practitioners, and/or nonprofit program administrators. The session will start with a brief introduction of the concepts of CREE and my experiences thus far as an internal evaluator working to establish a culture of CREE in my organization. The remainder of the session will be dedicated to conversation with participants. There will be 2-4 prompts for the roundtable to discuss. Participants will be invited to continue the conversation after the session, during and hopefully after the conference.