Join us for a Read, Reflect, Relate session with Martena Reed! 

The session will be offered virtually 12:00 pm (est) to 1:30 pm virtually on March 25th! If you are interested in participating, please sign up below.

See more info on the session

The Weight of Power: Reframing Evaluation in Philanthropy to Amplify the Voices of Communities of Color examines how philanthropy’s evaluation and reporting practices — often rooted in accountability, quantification, and standardized metrics — can reinforce longstanding power imbalances between funders and organizations led by people of color. Drawing on a mixed-methods study that included interviews and survey responses from nonprofit leaders and foundation staff, the authors surface persistent tensions around who defines success, what counts as evidence, and how evaluation requirements shape organizational sustainability.

The article outlines four strategies for advancing more equitable evaluation practice: aligning expectations with realistic timelines, allowing partners to define their own measures of success, investing in evaluation capacity and technical assistance, and turning the evaluative lens back onto funders themselves.

For evaluators, funders, and nonprofit leaders, this reading offers both critique and concrete pathways forward, challenging us to reconsider how power operates through measurement and how evaluation can shift from compliance to collaboration in service of equity and justice.