Case Study

W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Kellogg International Leadership Program Evaluation

Challenge

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) is committed to evaluation as a capacity-building tool for leadership development, organizational learning, and program improvement. In 1995, WKKF’s Evaluation Unit initiated a unique partnership with Development Guild/DDI to co-conduct an evaluation of the Kellogg International Leadership Program (KILP). KILP was a program designed to develop, support, and network leaders from Latin America, Africa, and the United States in order to more effectively help communities improve their quality of life. One of the core challenges was to design an evaluation that would support the foundation to improve KILP yet would also provide an objective assessment of the program’s success and impact.

Strategy

WKKF’s Evaluation Unit and Development Guild/DDI designed a process to engage all program stakeholders (including senior foundation leadership, program directors, program advisors, and program participants) in a process to build a broad consensus about what the program was trying to achieve, and how success would be measured.

The culmination of this process was the “KILP Leadership Profile”, which defined the values, personal qualities, knowledge and skills that citizens and communities need to build more just, healthy, sustainable, responsive and participatory organizations and systems. A panel of outside experts in the field of leadership program evaluation provided critical input to further strengthen the evaluation design.

Development Guild/DDI’s evaluation team provided timely information to program staff and worked closely with them to shape data collection opportunities that were relevant to the ongoing learning in the program. In addition, a team of nine KILP Fellows worked with Development Guild/DDI and WKKF throughout the evaluation, assisting in survey design and field-testing; analyzing and interpreting results; and encouraging their colleagues to participate in the evaluation. This strategy resulted in a 100% participation rate on the final survey from KILP Fellows around the world.

Results

This project increased the capacity of WKKF’s senior leadership and program directors to use evaluation as a planning tool, and to view evaluation as a program asset. Findings from the evaluation are documented in Developing Leadership in an International Context: A Summary of the Final Evaluation Report of the Kellogg International Leadership Program II.

Following the KILP project, Development Guild/DDI has partnered with WKKF to support further learning about leadership development. Available publications include: Leading Change in the New Millennium: A Call to Action (conference report); Engaging New Leadership Voices for Catalyzing and Sustaining Community Change; and Evaluating Outcomes and Impacts: A Scan of 55 Leadership Programs.