Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Tech Networks of Boston (also known as TNB) is pleased to invite local employees of nonprofit organizations to a Roundtable session on evaluation from the perspective of a community foundation.  Our featured guest will be Mary-Kim Arnold, the Rhode Island Foundation's director of evaluation and learning.

Here's what Mary-Kim says about the session:

"The issues that many foundations invest in are complicated, persistent, and often systemic. Many of the ambitious outcomes we seek will not be measurable at short-term intervals. How can we hold ourselves and our nonprofit grantees to high standards of rigorous inquiry about the effectiveness of our strategies and investments, while still acknowledging the difficulty in measuring what is not exclusively quantifiable?
 
"In this session, we will discuss some frameworks that offer a systems perspective on evaluation and explore ways to set intermediate benchmarks, and to quantify less traditional metrics.  We will emphasize the developmental and iterative nature of evaluation in the current nonprofit funding climate and look at ways we can assess organizational capacity for learning."
 
Here's a bit more about Mary-Kim:

Mary-Kim Arnold is the Rhode Island Foundation’s first director of evaluation and learning, charged with developing and overseeing the evaluation of the foundation’s investments against its strategic priorities. She previously led the foundation’s grantmaking work in arts and culture. Prior to joining the foundation in 2011, Mary-Kim was executive director of the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, where she led the state’s only agency dedicated to funding, supporting, and advancing the role of the humanities in public life. Earlier, she worked in Brown University’s Division of Advancement.

A published writer and poet, Mary-Kim also has taught expository and creative writing at Brown, Rhode Island School of Design, and Wheaton College. Mary-Kim earned her bachelor’s degree in English and American literature from Brown University, as well as a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Brown. She currently is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in a number of literary journals including The Rumpus, where she is essays editor.

Please note:

1) In keeping with the spirit of the TNB Roundtable series, this session will NOT be a sales pitch for any product or service.  This will be a professional development opportunity for nonprofit professionals who want to learn with and from their peers in other organizations.

2) This session is for employees of nonprofit organizations. It is not designed to meet the needs of vendors, volunteers, students, consultants, job-seekers, and others.

3) Priority in registration will be given to those who are employed by nonprofit organizations that hold full membership in the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network.

4) Participation in this session is free of charge for nonprofit professionals. However, you must have a confirmed reservation in order to attend.

5) If this session is booked to capacity by the time you seek to register for it, please go ahead and put yourself on the waiting list. We have a good track record of finding seats for nonprofit professionals on the waiting list.

We hope that you can join us for a vigorous and informative conversation, in which you will be welcome to share your knowledge and experience with your peers.

Best regards from Deborah

Deborah Elizabeth Finn | Senior Strategist   
Tech Networks of Boston       
1 Wadleigh Place  | South Boston, MA  02127    
Phone: 617.504.8188   | Fax: 888.527.9333     
deborah@techboston.com | techboston.com 

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