Core Documents Task Force Call for Letters of Interest to Serve

Date: Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Deadline August 31, 2023

Send submissions to alewis@eval.org

Charge:

The AEA Core Documents Task Force is charged with maintaining and periodically updating externally facing AEA core documents, including the AEA Guiding Principles, Evaluator Competencies, and Cultural Competence Statement.

The charge includes, but may not be limited to, reviewing existing documents and managing a process and schedule to ensure documents are reviewed and updated.

Rationale and Strategic Alignment:

In May 2022, the AEA Board received an update from the Professionalization and Competencies Working Group. During this discussion, it was highlighted that there is currently no existing mechanism for updating AEA’s core documents nor of ensuring that they remain relevant or consistent with each other.

This is a problem because the AEA has put several statements to the membership with a commitment to update every few years. No one is holding us to account on these commitments.

As a result of that discussion, a small subset of the Board had a follow-up conversation to consider viable options to address this gap. These options were discussed in the Sept 2022 Board meeting. The Board requested a more detailed list of core documents and timeline. This was provided and discussed at the January 2023 Board meeting and a motion was made and passed to convene a Task Force “to manage the Board core documents plan and updates.”

Illustrative Tasks (to be updated by the Task Force)

• Convene Task Force and launch work:
  • Identify and recruit Task Force members (chair or co-chairs): Complete prior to the 2023 AEA Conference.
  • Launch work with an initial in-person meeting at the 2023 AEA conference.
• Develop a workplan for the Task Force including major tasks, a timeline, and resource requirements.
• Develop and present a draft plan to manage the core documents and updates. This may include gathering input from members involved in prior updates to core documents to identify practices that have (or have not) proven effective.
• Incorporate input from the Board and submit a final plan for Board consideration, to include a roadmap for implementation.
• Launch next steps as appropriate.

Board Input:

• Approve work plan.
• Review of progress reports and updated timelines
• Review of updated documents

Members to be Selected by: Task Force Co-chairs

The Task Force will be made up of 5-8 total members. This is a standing task force.

Initial members will be assigned staggered terms not to exceed 3 years to ensure continuity of work and transfer of knowledge. Task force members may serve a maximum of 2 consecutive terms and no more than 3 terms in total.

Task Force membership will aim for representation of AEA members on the following characteristics:

• Geography/Region (different parts of US/international)
• Type of work (academic/practitioner)
• Theoretical/Methodological grounding
• Length of AEA membership
• BIPOC status
• Age/ Experience in evaluation
• Sexuality and gender identities
• A current GEDI participant or MSI Fellow

Expected Work Products:

• A work plan to review the list of core documents and develop an initial set of recommendations to the Board: Spring 2024
• Updated core documents, presented to the board for review and approval.

Periodic progress reports to be determined by Board meeting schedule between completion dates for preliminary and final recommendations.

Reporting Structure: Reports to the Board of Directors

Decision Authority: The Board of Directors will decide how best to implement the recommendations of the Task Force.

Authority Reference: AEA Policy Manual

To Apply:

Submit a letter of interest, along with a CV by August 31, 2023 to alewis@eval.org.