Building Evaluation Capacity in Human Service Organizations

This brief explores evaluation capacity—what it means, why it is important, and how organizations can build it.

Evaluation capacity refers to the ability to conduct, use, and continuously learn from evaluation. Building it involves developing motivation, knowledge, and skills for conducting evaluations and applying the findings.

Human service organizations of any size can build internal evaluation capacity. The advantages are well worth the effort, affecting individual knowledge and skills and fostering an organizational culture that embraces learning and reflection.