The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Retooling Professionals Evaluation Fellows program seeks to diversify the evaluation field by providing individuals with the necessary skills and training to become internal program evaluators. During the one-year fellowship, non-profit professionals will be trained in evaluation methodology while working on a real-world evaluation project for their employer. Each fellow will receive approximately 40 hours of training in two 3-5 day workshops. The non-profit organizations they represent will receive a $5,000 award and each fellow will receive a travel stipend of $1,500. Additionally, the fellows will receive technical assistance with completing an internal evaluation project at their organization.

The program’s goal is to help nonprofit professionals become better internal evaluators of their programs and better consumers of information for decision-making. The program also aims to equip participants with evaluation skills that will help enhance the evaluation capacity of their organizations. Ultimately the program seeks to infuse the evaluation field with well-trained individuals from diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives to meet the increasing diversity of programs and communities that the profession serves.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

To be eligible for the fellowship, non-profit professionals must:

• Have a demonstrated interest in evaluation and commit to remaining with their current employers during this year-long program;
• Be citizens or permanent residents of the United States or its territories at the time of application deadline;
• Work full-time for a qualifying non-profit organization;
• Have obtained a master’s degree or have 8 years of work experience in his or her field with some graduate course work;
• Have five to seven years of work experience following completion of graduate degree;
• Have limited professional experience and training in evaluation; and
• Be from a historically underrepresented and disadvantaged community.

To be considered a qualifying non-profit organization, organizations must:

• Be tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code;
• Serve underrepresented communities as defined by this CFA;
• Have an annual operating budget of between $1 and $5 million;
• Have limited evaluation capacity in-house but have interest in and commitment to increasing evaluation capacity of organization;
• Be able to demonstrate how they will use evaluation for ongoing learning and program development;
• Be willing to reallocate job functions to allow fellow to attend training & conduct internal evaluation.

We will select up to 10 non-profit professionals to enter the program. An advisory committee comprised of staff from RWJF, OMG, Duquesne University and other professionals with evaluation expertise will review the applications.