Appreciative Evaluation

Effective organizations need to learn continuously at all levels in order to stay current and continue to provide their customers relevant, high-quality service. We help our clients build monitoring systems and select evaluation methods that support and promote continuous learning. Using quantitative and qualitative data, we document best practices, and help translate lessons learned into innovations, implementation strategies, and policy.

ENCOMPASS has developed an innovative approach to evaluation that incorporates a leading-edge methodology in organization development called Appreciative Inquiry. ENCOMPASS’ groundbreaking work with appreciative evaluation is recognized by the American Evaluation Association as contributing an important new technique to the field. ENCOMPASS has been invited to present its approach to AEA members at annual meetings five years in a row, and again in 2008.

ENCOMPASS' President Catsambas published the first text on appreciative evaluation Reframing Evaluation Through Appreciative Inquiry (Sage, June 2006) co-authored with Dr. Hallie Preskill. ENCOMPASS' work with appreciative evaluation approaches was also published in the AEA’s journal, New Directions for Evaluation, Volume 100, Winter 2003. Fellow evaluators, donors, and clients are attracted to this approach because it:

Engages clients in structured dialogue to develop evaluation questions
Reframes evaluation tools to strengthen qualitative data collection
Promotes an interactive interpretation of findings and testing of hypotheses
Increases stakeholders’ commitment to the use of evaluation results and learning
Complements and strengthens existing evaluation practices

See published work in this area in Publications.