Our Approach

The Knight Foundation uses assessment as a tool for planning, learning and improvement. In partnership with our grantees, we work to support media innovation, community engagement and the arts. Evaluating our efforts in these areas provides us with the opportunity to learn collectively about what’s working most effectively. The purpose of our assessment activities is to provide timely and actionable insights that help our grantees strengthen the implementation of their projects and help our program teams design and execute their strategies. We strive to create a culture of shared learning that increases our grantees’ impact and advances the foundation’s mission by supporting ongoing improvement and adaptation.

Guiding Principles

Certain core principles guide our approach to assessment:

• Assessment should provide actionable information tied to key decision making and planning efforts.

• Assessment should be as participatory and collaborative as possible, so that grantees have ownership over the process and the findings.

• Assessment should be integrated into all aspects of our work, rather than treated as something that only happens when a project ends.

• Assessment should be shared publicly with the field to communicate what we and our grantees are learning, so that all can benefit.