One of the things I enjoy about working at the Packard Foundation is the emphasis on learning. In my past life, evaluation work was called M&E (Monitoring and Evaluation), but here it is MEL (Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning). Turns out, the addition of that one letter actually matters. It matters because our evaluation efforts are…

Last week, in the opening plenary of the Stanford Nonprofit Management Institute (NPMI), Steve McCormick, co-founder and CEO of the Earth Genome, posed this question: “If a divine being said they will solve the cause you are working on, and you would get none of the credit- a rival colleague would instead- would you take…