When reflecting on AMP’s evaluation journey thus far, the increased influence and use of evaluation is clear. Initially, evaluation had a quieter presence with a report at the end of each three-year funding cycle. As time passed, evaluation’s voice became louder and more profound. Evaluation helped increase AMP’s effectiveness and understanding of its impact on its partners, which ultimately had a stronger influence on strategic planning. With the formation of a partnership with the Evaluation Capacity Network (ECN) in 2020, AMP signalled a renewed intention on evaluation. Specifically, AMP underscored the importance of enhancing their evaluation capacities and those of their partners. Now that the AMPxECN partnership is nearing six years, you might be left wondering, “What’s next?”

AMP Promoting Evaluation in the Mentoring Network

After engaging in several evaluation capacity building (ECB) workshops with the ECN, AMP decided to devote time and energy to continually engaging in culturally-responsive evaluations and promoting its use and benefits to its partners. This is not only a present-day focus; in future strategic and operational goals, AMP has clearly outlined the vital role evaluation plays in supporting their mission and can have in the provision of high-quality mentoring across Alberta. Ultimately, AMP is promoting evaluation because they believe it has the power to help their partnership, both directly and indirectly.

Direct support. AMP’s partners can receive direct support and benefits from engaging in program evaluations or in ECB initiatives. In both opportunities, mentoring staff, advocates and even funders can gain skills and knowledge required to better understand their programming. As a result, these partners would be better informed and equipped to make meaningful decisions about program implementation and improvement.

Indirect support. AMP recognizes that not all agencies can directly engage in evaluation because it takes time, energy, and resources, whether engaging in an ECB workshop or when implementing an evaluation. In fact, organizations often reserve an “evaluation specialist” position to fill when, or if, possible! Therefore, AMP ensures that through their own evaluations completed at least once every three years, they are communicating with their partners their own evaluation findings and other evaluation-related information.

The indirect method through which AMP’s partners can benefit from evaluation is ongoing, regardless of whether partners can engage in evaluation or not. Recognizing this, AMP continually ensures that they promote evaluation through two pathways.

(1) AMP Models Evaluation

AMP demonstrates to its partners that evaluation is possible and generates positive outcomes through its own implementation of evaluation and participation in ECB initiatives. These benefits are shared through internal and community reports that summarize and highlight AMP’s experiences as a connector in the mentoring network, successes, obstacles, and how they might plan to move forward.

For example, the current evaluation for the 2023-2026 funding cycle is underway, with the ultimate purpose of “looking back to look forward”. AMP recognizes that it has been effective as a leader in the Alberta mentoring landscape and is a vital connector of programs, services, resources and people. However, with shifts in this landscape, they value learning from evaluation to inform how their future actions can be both meaningful and impactful to their partners.

AMP is also currently a community partner in a graduate-level ECB course, gaining increased knowledge and resources to support future evaluations. This includes the co-designing of an evaluation plan for the next funding cycle that can be implemented.

(2) Finding and Providing Evaluation Opportunities

Other indirect yet important ways AMP promotes evaluation, and its benefits include sharing ECB workshops or opportunities, and evaluation-specific resources in the newsletter, on their website, and on social media. Even this blog helps AMP show the significant impact evaluation can have for mentoring!

A very recent example of an opportunity AMP shared with its partners is the webinar series Approaches to Evaluation: Lessons, Reflections, Advice, which is hosted in collaboration with the ECN. Led by the ECN’s Decolonial Evaluation Learning (DEL) Team, this webinar series consists of three sessions where experts in the field share their wisdom and advice on different approaches to evaluation that help create safer and responsive evaluation spaces. This shared knowledge can foster more reflexive thinking and act as practical advice for those navigating the learning-to-practice journey of evaluation in the community. Two sessions have been held thus far, covering trauma-informed (January 2026) and Indigenous-informed approaches (March 2026) to evaluations. The third and final session is planned for May 2026, where Dr. Ayesha Boyce, an African American professor from Arizona State University and board member of the American Evaluation Association, will dive into Anti-Racist approaches to evaluation. If you are interested, please sign up here.

What are AMP’s Next Steps in Evaluation?

AMP is planning to have a spotlight on engaging in and learning more about evaluation. Within this spotlight is ensuring evaluations and evaluation trainings are Indigenized, decolonized, and culturally-responsive. Now that some bigger mentoring partners have evaluators or a role dedicated to evaluation in their organizational structure, this provides a new route for evaluation to be modelled for the rest of the AMP partnership. Most importantly, AMP knows it is important to be reflexive, open-minded, and adaptable along their evaluation journey.

As this blog edition marks the end of AMP’s first Evaluation & AMP Blog series, AMP’s Evaluation Journey, these concluding remarks reflect the dynamic nature of evaluation - as you engage in an evaluation, you learn and adapt along the way to ensure the voices and needs of those being impacted are at the centre. Evaluation is a continuum that reveals so much through consistency and adaptiveness, over time.