Evaluating Our Work
Since its founding in 1989, Essential Partners has operated as a learning organization.
We test our methods in the real world, publish original research, and welcome external researchers who want to analyze our approach. Click here to browse a selected archive of peer-reviewed, published research on EP's model and impact.
In 2016, Essential Partners invested in a comprehensive internal evaluation system to measure our work's impact. The Laura R. Chasin Project for Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) is designed to understand the impact of a training or dialogue project.
Thanks to our program evaluation team's hard work, MEL has set the gold standard for evaluation programs in the field of dialogue and deliberation.
Since 2017, we have collected, analyzed, and learned from data about our work every year. We have improved our workshops, refined our methodology, and expanded the types of continuing support we offer to all our training alumni. We also used that data as a benchmark to gauge the success of more recent innovations.
After seven years of rigorous evaluation, MEL 1.0 had given us all the insights it could to strengthen our approach. In 2023, we began the process of reimagining our evaluation system.
But first, we revised our theory of change.
EP’s Theory of Change (2026)
People typically learn how to communicate by absorbing the norms and behaviors of their schools, workplaces, faith institutions, and civic spaces. A professor teaches you to debate ideas. Your boss shows you how to lead a discussion. The pastor models how to connect with someone. A city councilor shows you how to engage different perspectives.
This learning happens whether it is intended or not, and people carry these lessons with them. The norms of these cornerstone institutions knit together to become the culture of a community.
Too many important institutions have cultures that encourage conflict and polarization. As a result, people don't gain the skills, habits, and tools they need for communication and connection—especially across differences of identities, perspectives, and values. When institutions aren’t designed for constructive engagement across differences, unhealthy norms drive isolation, polarization, and division across a community.
Essential Partners works to shift the culture of those cornerstone institutions by equipping people with our Reflective Structured Dialogue (RSD) approach and supporting them as they use it in their context.
In its most robust form, a trained facilitator can use RSD to hold group conversations about deeply divisive, complex topics—issues like abortion access, the role of guns, race and policing, gender and sexuality, or political divisions. However, RSD is flexible and adaptable. You can take it apart, adapt it, and deploy just the parts of RSD that make the most sense for your institution or community. Use it to lead meetings, support public events, or shape classroom teaching.
When policies, practices, and resources combine with relationships, social cohesion, and healthy communication, durable change takes place.
People work, learn, and collaborate more effectively because they can talk about issues that matter in constructive ways. It becomes “just the way we do things.” Even when there are deep differences, people feel valued, heard, and taken seriously, regardless of common ground or consensus.
When influential community institutions promote healthy norms, there are lots of benefits. People feel like they genuinely belong, even when they’re not in the majority. They can have hard conversations about uncompromising differences while maintaining strong social bonds. They can disagree about one issue on Tuesday, then collaborate on another issue on Friday. They can be their authentic selves without fear or shame.
Everything works better.
MEL 2.0: In-Depth Evaluation and Case Studies
To test this theory, we revised our Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning System to measure the impact of significant collaborations with cornerstone institutions, both within the institutions and beyond, in the community.
Each year, we select 1-2 partnerships for a case study. In the new evaluation system, we are using interviews and surveys to measure our impact across several important areas:
- the gain and use of dialogic skills and attitudes;
- the use and formalization of dialogic infrastructure; and
- social cohesion.
You can find one example of a case study that incorporates MEL 2.0 in Bridging, Belonging & Hope: Amplifying the Y Movement with Reflective Structured Dialogue.
Our first four cases provide early evidence that supports our Theory of Change. However, as we have done for the past decade, we will continue collecting new data to test our Theory of Change and learn as we move forward. We are deeply indebted to our incredible partners who invite us to learn with them as they build dialogic institutions and communities.
MEL 1.0: Your Open Source Evaluation Tool
Our MEL 1.0 evaluation system looks at impact over time. The research begins with interviews three months after the training. Further interviews take place at flexible intervals. These interviews measure the impact of a dialogue program or training in four categories:
- Understanding Others and Being Understood
- Willingness to Engage Across Differences
- Equipped to Engage Across Differences
- Healthy Relationships and Social Cohesion
We are making EP’s MEL 1.0 system available for free. First, we want to help people understand a bit about how we measure success and hold ourselves accountable. Second, we want to provide a resource for institutions, partners, funders, and supporters interested in making their own investment in monitoring, evaluation, and learning.
The full downloadable PDF includes more details on how we measure each of the four impact categories and the interview questions we use to assess each category.
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