CGI ‘09: Evaluation and #cgi10

The 5th Annual Clinton Global Initiative wrapped up Friday with a keynote address by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The 4-day event, which generated an astounding $9.4 billion in commitments for partnerships intended to address global challenges, featured an impressive slate of participants. Of all of the sessions I attended, it was the panel on Harnessing Innovation for Development that I found most interesting, largely because of Judith Rodin. Rodin, who is President of the Rockefeller Foundation, discussed the importance of measuring social impact for the ultimate success of social innovation. See Alexandra Cheney’s great summary of Rodin’s comments here.

Evaluation is a key part of Rodin’s model of social innovation.

We’ve gone past the moment where we can say that because this is philanthropy, we don’t need to measure its impact.

Evaluation also got a strong endorsement from Secretary Clinton during her closing remarks. She cited “haphazard monitoring and evaluation” as one reason that “years of effort and billions of dollars” have not produced lasting results. She also highlighted the administration’s planned emphasis on evaluation of the U.S.’s contribution to the G8 L’Aquila Initiative on Global Food Security:

We will make significant investments in monitoring and evaluation. We’re going to track commitments, just as we do here at CGI, to make sure pledges are fulfilled, and to gather data and publicly track our progress and results. That way, we are all accountable, and we’ll know if we’re falling short and need to change strategies.

This is encouraging news for observers of U.S. foreign assistance. But what can we make of her reference to CGI commitment tracking?

The hallmark of the Clinton Global Initiative is the commitments that are made to addressing serious global challenges. So unlike most other conferences, this one results in action — and $9.4 billion should enable a lot of action. Anyone can view the commitment database online. According to CGI, “commitments seek to translate good ideas into new, specific, and measurable actions.”

A CGI commitment shows continued progress against benchmarks within an established time frame and produces quantifiable outcomes. CGI takes pride in catalyzing commitments with measurable impact beyond monetary contributions.

I would love to see this aspect of the commitment process featured more prominently at #cgi10. President Clinton’s opening proclamation that #cgi09 was in the “how business” was echoed throughout the event by several moderators, but the discussions that I observed stopped short of critical reflection on ‘what works.’ Ray Suarez, Senior Correspondent for The NewsHour and moderator of the Plenary Session on Strengthening Infrastructure, reminded us that the “how” is the toughest part of the conversation — something that often remains unaddressed in meetings like this one.

One way to make sure that ‘what works’ is part of the conversation is organize sessions that focus on results — the “quantifiable outcomes” and “measurable impact” that are supposedly part and parcel of a CGI commitment. And by definition, results need to be more than outputs of the number of people served by a particular program.

The bottom line is that evaluation should be a driver of innovation and improvement. If framed and designed correctly, measurement and evaluation can help us to understand how programs work and to feed this information back into program improvement.