Luminary Evaluation Group Information

Luminary Evaluation Group believes evaluation should be accessible for organizations of every size and budget. Nonprofits often mistakenly believe that program evaluations are meant to analyze only highly complex programs and that they require the supervision of specialist researchers — at significant cost. They also observe that expensive evaluations fail to produce data that can be usefully applied by program staff and organizational leadership. Luminary exists to provide an answer for organizations in search of independent program evaluation that carefully balances rigor and actionability with affordability. To conduct productive and meaningful evaluations, Luminary bases its methodology on practices from the school of participatory evaluation. Participatory evaluation emphasizes the direct involvement of stakeholders as co-collaborators in the process. By engaging stakeholders, the focus of the evaluation is kept on investigations that will produce information useful to program staff, beneficiaries, organizational leadership, and funders.