Our principles

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Do no harm

  • Make informed choices about evaluation methods and processes to suit the particular situation.
  • Identify benefits and risks in the methods and processes available - especially for those left behind or excluded.
  • Learn from experiences in your own organisation and sector, and from others currently and in the past.
  • Review quality and impact of evaluation - especially for those left behind or excluded - in a systematic manner, and take action to improve.

Do maximum good

  • Embed evaluative thinking and evidence throughout planning and implementation, not only on completion of a project.
  • Act strategically to make decisions about where to focus evaluation efforts.
  • Address equity issues in every step of the evaluation process.

Principles guiding BetterEvaluation's work and engagement

  • Curate existing knowledge about the full range of evaluation methods and processes, not advocating for any one method or process.
  • Support decision-making. Co-create new knowledge about which methods and processes suit particular situations and how to use them well.
  • Provide tools for understanding equity implications of decisions at each stage of evaluation.
  • Look across boundaries. Draw on learnings from different organisations, sectors and disciplines, as well as regions, languages, knowledges and experiences.
  • Support application and adaption of new knowledge to people's own context and document emerging learnings.
  • Start from local needs and priorities and design learning and resources around these.
  • Learn about, respect and work appropriately within the local culture.
  • Identify and build on existing knowledge and strengths.
  • Design for learning over time rather than one-off events so that learners are supported over a period of time.
  • Establish true partnerships for mutual learning.