Borealis Philanthropy
Movement-Defined Learning Project
The Challenge
There is an inherent power imbalance that exists within funder-grantee relationships. Research and evaluation has historically been a tool that’s been used to reify this power imbalance. Evaluation processes and methods so often demand quantitative measures of impact, implying an expectation that grantees rapidly (and single handedly) dismantle long-standing systems of oppression missing the true labor, love, and cost of leading truly transformative work. We miss the challenges, the mental, emotional, and logistical fortitude needed. We miss the trauma organizers face when they are doxed and criminalized for pushing forward this work. We miss the power they’re building, for instance mutual care networks they’re weaving. We miss the true story of their efforts that will usher in changes for generations to come.
The Approach
The Movement-Defined Learning (MDL) Project is a liberatory learning and evaluation project designed to support communities in defining their own impact and success and reflect back their wisdom to resource and cultivate a culture of learning. It is collaboration among Social Insights Research and grantee partners of the Communities Transforming Policing Fund (CTPF) and the Black-led Movement Fund (BLMF) of Borealis Philanthropy. The project consists of multiple phases.
In the first phase, we recruited 11 grantee partners to participate in a series of Liberatory Learning Labs over the course of 5 months to examine the below questions culminating in the MDL evaluation tool.
“How do movement organizers measure the progress and impact of their organizations and their movements?”
“What do movement organizers need from donor partners, in terms of relationships, transparency, resources, and accountability, to continue their critical work?”
In the second phase, we implemented the MDL Pilot where we explored alternative evaluation methodologies for completing the MDL evaluation tool as advised by participants of the Liberatory Learning Lab.
The MDL Project is currently in its third phase aiming to complete a second iteration of the Liberatory Learning Labs to continue to generate learnings to inform an evaluation process that elevates the powerful storytelling capacities of movement leaders.
Highlights
1.
Acknowledge, Understand, and Share Power.
Power sharing is critical, and requires intentionality to build relationships founded on trust, reciprocity, and mutual accountability. Evaluation and learning processes is one fruitful pathway for funders to shift power.
2.
Participatory processes are in and of themselves outcomes.
Participants of the Liberatory Learning Lab highlighted how the process itself was equally important as the stories that the evaluation eventually illuminated. The process deepened the trust and relationship among the organizations and the BLMF and CTPF teams. In doing so, philanthropy can:
Move into a place of deepened alignment with movements for justice
Acknowledge how normative, Eurocentric evaluation processes have caused significant harm, particularly to BIPOC-led organizations and communities
Invest in approaches that more effectively lift up stories of marginalized communities
3.
Balance Between Guidance and Emergence in Co-creation.
We continue to wrestle with the balance of cultivating an emergent space in which organizers lead the work and vision and providing enough guidance and direction so as to not burden or overwhelm organizers. After all, this project is one of many within the purview of their organizational missions around justice and liberation.