Systems Evaluation Toolkit Workshop Series

Select this ticket package to sign up for all four workshops in the Systems Evaluation Toolkit Series and receive a 15% discount on the total cost.

As a participant, you will work step-by-step through how Social Network Analysis can make relationships, roles, and flows visible and evaluable. The session moves beyond conceptual overviews to focus on application, including: 

• framing evaluative questions for network inquiry, 
• designing survey instruments, 
• mapping relational data, and 
• interpreting patterns in ways that support learning, strategy, and adaptation. 

Throughout, the emphasis is on evaluative sensing and sense-making via this approach, with examples of helpful tools you can take away. You will leave with increased knowledge and confidence in a technique you can apply immediately to strengthen evaluation in complex environments. SNA will be presented as a concrete example of how systems thinking can be operationalized in evaluation practice. 

This half-day, hands-on workshop introduces Realist Theory of Change (RToC) as a practical framework for applying realist thinking in evaluative design, learning, and sense-making. Realist Theory of Change supports evaluators to move beyond generic or compliance-driven theories of change by making causal assumptions explicit, testable, and responsive to context. 

Realist evaluation looks at systems and asks how outcomes actually happen—through which mechanisms, and in which contexts—rather than assuming a single, linear path that works everywhere. It asks, “What works, for whom, and in what circumstances?” Using this lens helps make your theories of change more specific and easier to evaluate.

As a participant, you will work step-by-step through how Realist Theory of Change  can be used to articulate and examine causal hypotheses in complex systems. After a brief conceptual overview, we will spend our time focused on application, including: 

• Articulating (and documenting) context as causal infrastructure 
• Distinguishing between program resources, participant reactions, and hypothesized change 
• Drafting disciplined, testable change statements 
• Disambiguating outcomes for predictive and evaluative clarity 
• Mapping outcomes onto any number of impact frameworks to support analysis and interpretation 

We will emphasize evaluative sensing and sense-making using realist logic, and use structured exercises to begin application to your own real-world evaluation challenges. We will use RToC to turn systems-thinking concepts into concrete evaluation practice, supporting ongoing inquiry, collective insights, and even productive disagreement along the way.  

This half-day interactive workshop will build your capacity with an introduction to boundary critique and Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH). Critical Systems Heuristics is a structured way to surface and examine the assumptions and values that shape how a system works and how we evaluate it.  

As a participant, you will work step-by-step through the four domains of CSH (motivation, control, knowledge, and legitimacy), applying structured questions to real evaluation contexts. Through a mix of knowledge sharing, individual application, and facilitated discussion, the workshop supports participants to: 

• surface boundary judgments, 
• distinguish aspirational from actual experience, and 
• examine how values, power, and perspective shape systems. 

Drawing on the facilitators applied practice in philanthropy, Indigenous governance, and professional development settings, this session presents CSH as a practical, learnable method for ethical sense-making. 

This half-day, hands-on workshop introduces Outcome Harvesting as a practical, learning-oriented evaluation approach suited to complex systems where change is distributed, emergent, and not fully predictable in advance. The workshop focuses on building a clear understanding of the method, with emphasis on evaluation use, learning, and adaptation. 

As a participant, you will work step-by-step through the six steps of Outcome Harvesting, which we have organized as a circle. For each step, we will move from conceptual grounding into applied practice, including: 

• Framing Useable Questions that reflect multiple types of change; 
• Designing the harvest, including roles, definitions, and data sources; 
• Collecting and tagging data to develop evidence descriptors; 
• Collating evidence descriptors to surface outcome hypotheses; 
• Engaging knowledge-holders to strengthen, correct, and contextualize those hypotheses; 
• Interpreting outcomes using contribution and salience analysis to support adaptation, strategy, and system-level learning. 

Throughout the workshop, emphasis is placed on evaluative sensing and sense-making: learning to notice patterns of change, ask better questions about contribution, and engage stakeholders in reflective interpretation. Examples and exercises draw on over a decade of applied Outcome Harvesting practice in local contexts, including experience alongside Indigenous-led work where relational accountability, contextual integrity, and respect for multiple ways of knowing are central.