DOI
10.9707/1944-5660.1783
Key Points
Organizations funding climate work must learn quickly and make urgent decisions despite uncertainties and low levels of control. Within climate philanthropy, sharing learnings widely and using evidence for decision-making are crucial.
The authors argue the “evaluation” field is both misdefined and underleveraged. In a shift away from accountability and siloed learning within organizations, they propose redefining the evaluation profession as SMILE (Strategy, Monitoring, Impact, Learning, and Evaluation).
After three years of building field-wide learning infrastructure, the authors reflect on the field’s progress and offer recommendations to the climate philanthropy ecosystem.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Arranz, M., Warne, R., Deich, O., & Abdelrazik, A. (2026). More Than the Sum: A Collective Vision for the Future of Strategy, Monitoring, Impact, Learning and Evaluation (SMILE) in Climate Philanthropy. The Foundation Review, 18(3). https://doi.org/10.9707/1944-5660.1783
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