For foundations, making an impact requires good planning, intentional work toward a goal, and a drive to keep learning and improving. Evaluation is a critical tool along the way.

This primer makes the case for evaluation as a powerful tool for your foundation. It will: • Define impact and evaluation.

• Discuss the many reasons to incorporate evaluation into your foundation’s work.
• Introduce the principles that keep evaluation meaningful and manageable for small foundations.
• Profile foundations that use simple evaluation to get to impact.
• Give steps to set the stage for evaluation at your foundation.

We hope this primer will spur productive conversations at your foundation and enable you to use straightforward evaluation techniques to address an important question: Are we making a difference?

17 pages