Assessment Initiative

Dodge shares a responsibility with our non-profit partners to evaluate the specific work being funded by the Foundation.  With an eye towards our longer-term contribution to these groups and to society, however, we are placing our emphasis on their ability to evaluate and constantly improve their own work through the Dodge Assessment Initiative.

The Initiative is a joint venture between the Dodge Foundation and non-profit organizations that have received Dodge grants and have responded to our invitation to tackle a difficult and important topic together: to improve the performance of non-profit organizations, including our own, through a more thoughtful, sustained and sophisticated approach to assessment.

As of the end of 2006, over 1,275 individuals from 672 organizations have attended an introductory Assessment I workshop or an intensive small group Assessment II follow up workshop.

The Initiative is about capacity building within organizations rather than about reporting back to Dodge, which is evident in the summary of assessment principles and concepts that underlie the specific approaches to assessment being developed by the various groups. In short:

  • We see assessment as a matter of careful design, incorporated in planning from the beginning, not tacked on to the end;
  • We particularly emphasize the power of feedback, the kind you won’t get unless you design to get it;
  • We are urging the groups we are working with to become assessment cultures, and we are trying to do the same ourselves.

As you explore this section, we encourage you to take a look as well at our Technical Assistance Workshops which are closely linked to the underlying research and principles of the Assessment Initiative and help promote a culture of assessment.

 

The Assessment Initiative owes a debt of gratitude to the seminal work in educational assessment of Dodge Grant recipient Grant Wiggins of Re:Learning (formerly The Center on Learning, Assessment and School Structure). Good assessment, in Wiggins’ educational context, is part of the teaching and learning.

The application of this work to the performance of non-profit organizations has proven to be direct and helpful. This Dodge effort rests substantially on the core Wiggins' theme that the primary purpose of assessment is to improve performance, not merely audit it.