Roger Nozaki, Barr’s vice president, shares the goals, principles, and next steps for learning and evaluation at the Foundation—including a search for a new director.

Written by Roger Nozaki

Since I arrived at Barr in July, one of my top priorities has been to advance the Foundation’s approach to learning and evaluation: how we gauge the impact we’re having and apply and share the lessons we’re learning. I am pleased to be able to share key insights and decisions that emerged from our months-long inquiry.

Over the past six months, we drew on the generous insights of grantees and partners, input from colleagues and experts nationally, and findings from benchmarking efforts (such as the timely release last fall of a new report on evaluation practices from The Center for Effective Philanthropy). This research helped us understand current practices, opportunities, and needs, and to reflect, with our trustees, on the best path for Barr.

From these conversations, we have framed a set of goals, principles, and next steps.

Our overall goal for evaluation and learning is to maximize the impact of the Foundation’s resources over time. We will pursue this goal in two ways:

We will also make targeted investments in capacity building, where we and our partners identify particular needs and opportunities.

“Our overall goal for evaluation and learning is to maximize the impact of the Foundation’s resources over time.”

Three guiding principles will shape all of our evaluation and learning efforts—that they be meaningful, actionable, and manageable:

One immediate, significant investment will be to build our staff capacity and knowledge by hiring a director of learning and evaluation.This person will work with Foundation leadership and staff to continue sharpening our overall approach, and with program teams to refine and implement clear goals, learning questions, metrics, learning opportunities, and targeted evaluations.We invite you to review the job description and to help us identify strong candidates for this important role.

Investments in learning and evaluation flow directly from Barr’s core values and from the ways we approach all of our work—in particular, with commitments to share knowledge and learning, and to demonstrate openness and transparency. We acknowledge we have much to learn, and we are excited to take these next steps in partnership with many this year.

authors and contributors:

Roger Nozaki poses for a headshot. He wears a blue pullover and glasses and smiles warmly.