Real Evaluation

Breakthrough Clarity.

Cut through the clutter

Welcome to Real Evaluation, a world-class evaluation consulting, capacity building, and professional development organization. We provide super-practical evaluation tools and frameworks to design, guide, accelerate, and track deep, sustainable change.

Founded in 1997 by Dr. Jane Davidson, Real Evaluation is now based in Seattle, but continues to work globally, across multiple sectors. Wherever you are in the world, Real Evaluation offers refreshingly practical support, evaluation workshops, coaching, and keynotes for organizations seeking clarity and practicality.

“A fragrant breath of fresh evaluative air.”

– Dr. Lee Risby, Director of Effective Philanthropy, Laudes Foundation

What we’Ve BEEN working on

The Laudes Foundation, an independent, Europe-based foundation, is responding to the dual crises of inequality and climate breakdown through synergistic and collaborative efforts in finance and capital markets, the fashion industry, and the built environment. With an ambition this broad, a global system so huge and complex, and so many potential change levers to pull, what kind of evaluation and learning system would you need to guide the change?

In 2020, Drs. Jane Davidson and Thomaz Chianca developed a systemwide theory of change and a rubric-enhanced measurement and learning system for the Laudes Foundation. This was designed to provide succinct answers to leaders’ most important evaluation questions and keep their fingers on the pulse of this large-scale emergent change – from the Board through senior leadership to the programmatic teams overseeing specific projects. 

About Jane Davidson

Dr. Jane Davidson is an internationally recognized evaluation specialist, best known for developing evaluation rubrics as a methodology for drawing conclusions about quality and value.

She has also made significant contributions in the areas of causal inference for qualitative and mixed methods, and in synthesis methodologies for evaluation.