Authors: Donna Loveridge (Independent Consultant), Ed Hedley (Itad Ltd UK, GB)The nature and magnitude of global challenges, such as climate change, poverty and inequality, biodiversity loss, food insecurity and so on, means that $4 trillion is needed annually to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Government and philanthropic funding is not enough but additional tools include businesses and sustainable finance. Evaluators may relate to many objectives that business and sustainable finance seek to contribute to but discomfort can arise in the mixing of profit, financial returns, impact and purpose.
Sustainable finance, impact investing, and business for good are growing globally and provides opportunities and challenges for evaluators, evaluation practice and the profession.
This session explores this new landscape and examines:
- What makes us uncomfortable about dual objectives of purpose and profit, notions of finance and public good, and unfamiliar stakeholders and languages, and what evaluators can do in response.
- The opportunities for evaluators to contribute to solving interesting and complex problems with current tools and skills and where is the space for developing evaluation theory and practice.
- How evaluation practice and evaluators' competencies might expand and deepen, and not get left behind in these new fields, and also sustaining evaluations relevance to addressing complex challenges.
The session draws on experience in Australia and internationally to share some practical navigation maps, tools and tips to help evaluators traverse issues of values and value, working with investors and businesses, and identify opportunities to add value.
