Pathways to becoming an internal evaluator: Perspectives from the Australian non-government sector

In this paper, the authors aim to understand the pathways to becoming an internal evaluator, specifically how existing employees in NGOs move into evaluation roles.

The authors draw on their own experiences to discuss the career pathways of people conducting and championing evaluation, and inform the professionalisation movement. They have identified a gap in the literature on internal evaluation and aim to address this gap in this paper and a previous enquiry investigating the role of evaluation literacy in internal evaluation.

The key findings of this paper are:

• "Career pathways into internal evaluation are not clear.
• Clarity around career pathways and role identification would be valued.
• Evaluative thinking can be initiated by different catalysts.
• The professionalisation movement could be enhanced by increasing the focus on internal evaluation." (Rogers et al. 2019)