MN IBPOC in Evaluation Community of Praxis

Our dream is for the ancestral, experiential, and community knowledge of groups who continue to be excluded from and harmed by evaluation to begin shaping and driving evaluation—not just evaluation projects or interventions, but evaluation as a field. Shaping the field means the power to challenge the underlying discourses of racialized poverty and other disparities and disproportionalities that normalize the racial distribution of resources. The first two studies of IBPOC evaluators, both published in 2020, as well as dissertation research on the history of the field and our own survey of our earliest members suggest that evaluation and its surrounding industries continue to use IBPOC evaluators at the lowest levels to gain entrée into our communities without changing white supremacist organizational structures, cultures, and business as usual into which IBPOC are expected to assimilate. Existing efforts focused on IBPOC are predicated on IBPOC deficits—a presumed lack of education, particularly in STEM—and fail to acknowledge evaluation’s historical and ongoing patterns of exclusion and erasure. At best, they focus on building individual IBPOC skills and opportunities in evaluation without recognizing the systemic nature of oppression and mechanisms involved in systemic change. 

In response, we are organizing to build, share, and wield our collective power to effect structural change rather than continuing to compete with each other for token positions conducting business as usual at white dominated firms and agencies. Specifically, the Minnesota IBPOC in Evaluation Community of Praxis (MN IBPOC in Evaluation CoP) offers Minnesotans from racially otherized groups who are working in evaluation: 

• healing space/ time/ community to support and raise consciousness with and among each other
• a regenerative network through which we can influence evaluation theory and practice through: collaborative publications and presentations; cooperative research/ evaluation projects; and engagement in collective action with respect to evaluation’s professional associations, academic programs, academic journals, publishers, and government and philanthropic contractors and funders.

Our use of the word “praxis” reflects our commitment to ongoing action, reflection, and theory that grows out of liberatory struggles. A regenerative network—whether in sustainable agriculture or in socio-economic contexts—ensures that the circulation of resources is regenerative rather than exploitative or extractive. We like to think of our network as a combination of a mutual aid society, a union, and a cooperative. In the spirit of systems-oriented interventions, it creates space for emergence, which arises from interconnectedness. 

Propel Nonprofits is the 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor for the MN IBPOC in Evaluation Community of Praxis. Your donation will contribute to the general operating funds of the Community of Praxis.