Why I Don’t Want to Do Your Evaluation For You
At some point, I realized I didn’t want to do evaluations for accidental evaluators—my kindred spirits—anymore. That model felt transactional. It was like mining: extracting information, crafting a report, and then leaving. I’d take my resources away when the evaluation was over, leaving behind a few polished gems but no sustainable way forward.
Instead, I shifted to a coaching approach, grounded in collaboration, co-creation, and building capacity for lasting impact. Here’s why:
1. Cultivating Self-Sufficiency
Coaching is about cultivating self-sufficiency. Through skill-building and confidence development, accidental evaluators discover their capacity to assess, adapt, and improve their work. While external consultants might provide valuable insights, their expertise leaves with them. Coaching strengthens evaluators’ knowledge and tools, enabling them to carry out meaningful evaluations independently. This approach ensures their work can continue to grow and evolve long after the coaching relationship ends.
2. Elevating Local Expertise
External evaluators and funders often impose worldviews that unintentionally overshadow the knowledge and experiences of the communities they’re evaluating. This marginalization can create an equity issue. Coaching, by contrast, prioritizes local expertise and the insights of those closest to the work. It supports co-creation and co-ownership of the evaluation process, respecting and amplifying the knowledge that already exists within communities. Rather than imposing solutions, coaching helps communities recognize and utilize their own wisdom.
3. Authenticity Through Co-Creation
Coaching ensures that evaluation is not something done to a community but something created with them. By involving community members directly, we ensure that evaluations are reflective of their voices, values, and lived experiences. This co-ownership fosters authenticity and relevance, making the process just as impactful as the outcomes.
4. Values-Driven Evaluation
Accidental evaluators are often deeply connected to their mission and values. They approach evaluation not as a compliance exercise but as a way to ensure their work aligns with their principles and serves their communities effectively. Coaching honors these values, tailoring evaluation practices to reflect the mission and voices of those involved. Instead of imposing an external framework, coaching centers the community’s vision, making the evaluation truly theirs.
5. Building Adaptive Capacity and Resourcefulness
Coaching helps organizations cultivate adaptability and resourcefulness. Instead of relying on external consultants for every project or challenge, they develop in-house expertise that enables staff to confidently design, implement, and use evaluations independently. This reduces long-term costs while enhancing their ability to respond proactively to emerging needs and opportunities.
For smaller organizations, coaching also helps embed evaluation seamlessly into daily workflows, aligning it with existing practices and priorities. This ensures evaluation becomes a natural, efficient part of operations rather than an additional burden. The result is a process that consistently adds value—informing decisions, guiding improvements, and demonstrating impact—without overwhelming capacity.
6. Planning for Use
Through coaching, I help accidental evaluators design evaluation practices intentionally for use. Evaluation becomes an ongoing cycle of learning and adaptation—not a one-time project or static deliverable. Insights generated are immediately actionable, driving continuous improvement rather than sitting unused in a report. By fostering this mindset, coaching creates a sustainable foundation for meaningful and lasting change.
7. Building a Community of Practice
Group coaching creates a vibrant community of practice, where like-minded evaluators come together to share challenges, celebrate successes, and learn collaboratively. This network of accidental evaluators becomes a collective space for purpose-driven evaluation, fostering mutual growth and innovation. Participants benefit not only from my guidance but also from the diverse perspectives and shared wisdom of their peers. These connections create a supportive ecosystem and a collective sense of ownership in advancing meaningful evaluation practices.
8. Cost-Effective for Small Organizations
For small, mission-driven organizations with limited budgets, coaching is a more affordable and impactful alternative to hiring external consultants. Rather than investing in a one-time evaluation report, organizations can allocate resources toward building internal capacity. This approach allows them to develop sustainable evaluation practices that evolve with their needs over time. By building evaluation skills internally, organizations reduce their reliance on external expertise while ensuring the evaluation process remains aligned with their mission, goals, and community priorities.
9. Joy in the Journey
Finally, coaching is more fulfilling—for everyone involved. Working alongside accidental evaluators, witnessing their growth, and seeing evaluation become a meaningful extension of their work is a joy. Helping someone realize that evaluation doesn’t have to be daunting—that it can empower their mission—is incredibly rewarding. Those “aha” moments make coaching a shared journey of growth and purpose.
A Call to Action
When coaching is done well, the skills and insights remain within the community long after I leave. This creates a ripple effect where knowledge grows and is passed on, making evaluation a living tool that evolves alongside the organization. It gives communities the capacity to adapt to emerging needs over time, ensuring sustainability.
Coaching accidental evaluators isn’t just about teaching skills—it’s about disrupting extractive models of evaluation, centering community voices, and creating systems that are equitable, sustainable, and deeply rooted in purpose. Together, we’re redefining what evaluation can be: a tool for learning, connection, and meaningful transformation.
If you’re ready to explore this approach, let’s connect. The journey of coaching is one of mutual growth, and I can’t wait to see where it takes us.
Curious what this could mean for you? Schedule a free 30-minute session and let’s talk!
