Evaluation Capacity Building
Evaluation can support strategic learning in an organization and provide data to inform project development, evidence-informed policies, and overall decision-making. Today, organizations across all sectors are required to conduct rigorous evaluations to demonstrate accountability, improve services, secure funding, and enhance their response to complex client needs.
CUP receives requests from organizations and community groups to develop their evaluation skills, access to evaluation resources, and enhance their ability to perform effective, culturally relevant evaluations. This work is called “evaluation capacity building” (ECB).
All our capacity-building programs and evaluation projects follow a community-engaged approach. This means these programs and projects are co-created in close collaboration with a range of community partners, nonprofits, frontline staff, governments, and funding agencies.
The main driver of evaluations at CUP is the Evaluation Capacity Network (ECN), founded by CUP’s associate director Rebecca Gokiert in 2014.
Current Projects
Evaluation Capacity Network (ECN)
2014 - Present
CUP Research team
The Evaluation Capacity Network (ECN) is a national network dedicated to strengthening the capacity of individuals and organizations to conduct and use community-based evaluation to improve practices, programs, and policies. ECN’s approach is community-driven, culturally responsive, and aims for equitable participation, with a strong emphasis on action-oriented engagement.
The ECN was founded in 2014 in response to community partners seeking to better understand and use evaluations. Housed in CUP, the ECN acts as a central evaluation hub where students, researchers, government partners, community organizations, and practitioners from across Canada can share expertise, resources, and access to networks. See our team for a list of network members and partner organizations.
To date, we have engaged over 600 learners (undergraduate students, graduate students, and community learners) and 122 case studies to collaboratively build evaluation frameworks for community organizations and support responsive evaluation practices. The ECN engages over 400 members from across North America and globally.
Key initiatives from the ECN include:
- Formal 13-week credit courses in the School of Public Health (SPH 504 and SPH 563)
- UEval, a one-week evaluation institute offered every spring term at the University of Alberta.
- Evaluation Capacity Case Challenge (EC³), an evaluation capacity building and training program offered in partnership with the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University.
- Settlement Evaluation Hub, on-demand community-based evaluation resources tailored to the settlement-serving sector.
To learn more, visit the ECN’s website
Alberta Mentoring Partnership (AMP)
2020 - Present
CUP Research team
Founded in 2008, the Alberta Mentoring Partnership (AMP) is a network of community mentoring agencies, government, and youth working together to raise the profile of mentoring in Alberta. Currently, the AMP partnership consists of over 240 organizations, including government ministries, community-based organizations, school authorities, Indigenous communities, and service clubs. Through collaborative work with its partnership, AMP’s mission is to strengthen Alberta’s capacity to support and enhance mentoring to ultimately foster positive development and see young people thrive through mentoring relationships.
Evaluation has always played a crucial role in supporting AMP’s growth and efforts in raising the mentoring profile in Alberta. However, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a shift to online mentor programming, AMP recognized the need for support in increasing their own and their partnership’s program evaluation capacities. After initially partaking in the ECN’s U-Eval institute, AMP approached the ECN to form an official partnership. Since 2020, AMP and the ECN have worked collaboratively to develop evaluation capability-building initiatives that support the evaluation needs of AMP and the mentoring sector across Alberta. Specifically, this has resulted in the development of:
- An evaluation capacity-building webinar series, introducing evaluation and evaluation basics for Alberta’s mentoring sector.
- E-Eval, a 6-month online intensive and experiential evaluation capacity-building (ECB) training.
- Pre-Eval, an eight-part introductory webinar series.
The ECN-AMP partnership has evolved with time. In recent years, the research team has worked with three mentor organizations as external program evaluators to assess the effectiveness of a new mentoring program for young adults transitioning from care. The research team has also been working alongside AMP in conducting a summative evaluation of their organizational functioning. Throughout all years of the partnership, the ECN research team supported AMP and its partnership in sharing evaluation resources and knowledge through newsletter articles, blog posts, and contributions to AMP’s Knowledge Hub.
Decolonial Evaluation Learning (DEL) Team
2023 - Present
CUP Research team
Rebecca Gokiert, Melissa Tremblay, Abi Gallimore, Cheryl Lee-Yow
The Decolonial Evaluation Learning (DEL) team, part of the Evaluation Capacity Network (ECN), is a collective of students, faculty, and community members who come together to navigate nuances and acknowledge multiple approaches to evaluation. The DEL team strives to foster respectful and responsive relationships within evaluation, develop our ways of knowing, and evolve our understanding of possibilities for decolonial evaluation. We support and facilitate learning in ways that are respectful, relevant, reciprocal, responsible, and reverent of Indigenous and marginalized communities.
Our key initiatives
The Decolonial Evaluation Emerging Scholars Fellowship
This award is an opportunity to encourage evaluators to support addressing systemic barriers in the field of evaluation and bring forward diverse perspectives that broaden our understanding of decolonial practices.
DEL Webinars
Throughout the years, we have offered multiple webinars focusing on decolonial approaches to evaluation. Webinars in 2025-2026 were organized in collaboration with Alberta Mentoring Partnership (AMP) and Evaluation Capacity Case Challenge (EC3).
Knowledge Mobilization
We have had the privilege of sharing our team’s insights at multiple conferences like American Evaluation Association (AEA) Conference, Canadian Evaluation Society (CES) Conference, and the Festival of Teaching and Learning. Each conference has been a meaningful opportunity to share the work we have been doing, learn from similar initiatives, and collaboratively dream of future directions of our work.
Access past DEL webinars
- Approaches to Evaluation: “Trauma-Informed Approaches to Evaluation” (presented by Shelby Corley, Alecia Kallos, and Eyerusalem Tessera)
- Widening Our Worldview: “Data Sovereignty in Evaluation” (presented by Amber Bedard)
- Widening Our Worldview: “Arts-based Data Generation” (presented by Lana Whiskeyjack)
- Widening Our Worldview: “Logic Models and Theories of Change” (presented by Andrea L. K. Johnston)
- Widening Our Worldview: “Co-Creating Evaluation Plans” (presented Gladys Rowe)
Learn more about the DEL on the ECN’s website
Recently Completed Projects
2023-2025
The Edmonton Youth Economic Ecosystem Collaborative (EYEEC) was a two-year initiative, funded by BGCBigs and MITACS, to improve economic opportunities for youth aged 15-30 in Edmonton. The project’s focus was on youth who face systemic barriers.
Recognizing that economic mobility is shaped by complex social, educational, and workforce dynamics, EYEEC sought to address these challenges through cross-sector collaboration among youth-serving organizations, employers, funders, the education sector, and government agencies.
In the first year of operation, we worked in partnership with EYEEC to build and implement an evaluation for the initiative. During its second year, our role was to document the initiative’s key insights, learnings, and outcomes to report back to the funders and support the EYEEC’s steering committee in capturing its journey and assessing its impact.