Core Issues in Comprehensive Community-Building Initiatives ...

The Researcher-Funder Relationship
Some CCIs do not have formal evaluations at all. Others
bring in evaluators quite early, as described earlier. Still
others bring in evaluators after an initiative is well underway.
And given the ambivalence toward research, nearly
everything about the hiring and conduct of evaluation is
subject to intense scrutiny and second-guessing. Researchers
are most often hired by a funder, but sometimes
are brought in by a community collaborative. Others have
to pass muster with local lead agencies in some way. As
reported above, Requests for Proposals (RFPs) sometimes
specify that research teams must be diverse, other times
they are left entirely ambiguous as to design and process.
Even after a painstaking selection process, it is rare
for a funder to contract for an evaluation and let it proceed
without checks and balances. Some funders expect to be
able to review and edit reports before they are made public.
Others require that initiative staff or local collaboratives
have the same advise and consent powers. During the
evaluation, researchers may be asked to provide advice
(technical assistance) to local entities and they may be
asked to provide feedback on the initiative to the funder
independent of community review.
In short, researchers can be pulled in many directions:
community stakeholders need to feel that their interests
are understood and will be protected by the researcher in
order to engage fully in an evaluation. Funders, on the
other hand, may treat researchers as emissaries or intermediaries,
asking both for formal evaluation but also for
informal feedback that may or may not compromise community
relationships. One researcher asked others in the
focus group for advice on how to respond to, without angering,
a funder that takes unfair advantage of the researcher’s
knowledge of a community. In that instance, we were told:
The evaluators and TA providers became the
agents by which the foundation chose to exercise
its need for accountability and monitoring.
Methodological issues aside, it just seemed to be
a very dangerous sort of precedent. It seems to
me evaluators need to take a stance opposite that
and say [to the funder], “we can’t effectively fill
this role, and if you have accountability issues
then find other ways of satisfying them than using
Community ambivalence, even hostility
toward evaluation derives in part from the
impact on relationships, reputation, funding,
and sometimes policy that evaluation
reports can have.
your TA and evaluators to do that.” [But] how do
you diplomatically maintain your need for independence,
to maintain your relationships of trust
with the community?
Establishing and maintaining a good relationship with
a funder, therefore, is almost as important—and almost as
difficult—as establishing relationships within the community,
said researchers. As suggested earlier, community
ambivalence, even hostility toward evaluation derives in
part from the impact on relationships, reputation, funding,
and sometimes policy that evaluation reports can have. The
influence that the researcher has on the funder of a CCI can
be of particular concern. As was true of all the other groups
in this project, researchers spent a lot of time talking about
the influence, attitudes, and power of funders. Said one,
How can an evaluator who basically carries information
from the community to the funder downplay
the role of monitor? The fact that the evaluator
represents the funder is overwhelming: so
much is riding on funding. It’s no surprise that
community representatives have trouble with that
communication. It’s an abiding tension.
And whereas the comment above from one interview
suggests that the research is primarily allied with the fund-
Power, Race, and Community Research 9