Ten years ago, Project Evident set out to solve a structural problem at the heart of how the social and education sector approached evidence.

Practitioners were being asked to prove impact, but rarely supported in building the systems required to do so well. Evidence was reactive, often generated to satisfy funders’ demands rather than to inform better decisions. Evaluation was episodic, rather than continuous. Data systems were added as an afterthought rather than built in. The result was a sector in which funders demanded rigor without providing the resources that made it possible, and where organizations were perpetually caught between the demands of delivery and documentation.

It was out of that constructive dissatisfaction that Strategic Evidence Planning (SEP) — and Project Evident itself — were born. We believed that something better was possible if the field could agree on what “better” actually looked like.

Today, that work continues to evolve. What began as a disciplined approach to evidence strategy has grown into a broader commitment to advancing evidence infrastructure for impact — durable systems that make better, faster, cheaper, and more equitable outcomes possible at scale. We are thrilled that strategic evidence planning has been embraced by the field, but more is needed to fully deliver for practitioners and their funders. 

Constructive Dissatisfaction as a Starting Point

Kelly Fitzsimmons, CEO and a member of the founding team that shaped SEP, reflects:

“We were frustrated by a system that treated evidence as an afterthought — something organizations had to produce rather than something they could build strategically, and truly USE. We believed practitioners — nonprofits and school districts — deserved intentional infrastructure for evidence, just like they build for finance or operations.”

SEP was how that belief took shape in practice. From the start, it was designed as a strategic process — not a compliance exercise, nor a one-time evaluation — to help organizations determine:

• What evidence actually matters for improving outcomes for individuals and communities?
• What questions need to be answered now versus later? And what methods are appropriate and should be prioritized?
• What capacities are required by internal teams and external partners?
• How should investments in evidence capacity, R&D, and impact management be sequenced?
• How should funders align around evidence goals shared with their grantees?
  

Over time, the SEP proved that when practitioners are supported in defining and sequencing their evidence priorities, decisions get made with greater strategic clarity and confidence. Resources are allocated to the highest impact efforts. Organizations stop reinventing wheels they’ve already built. And most importantly, they increase equity by grounding decisions in data that reflects the lived, contextually relevant experience of the communities they serve.

SEP also surfaced something harder to solve: A good plan is only as durable as the systems sitting underneath it. While planning is necessary, it is not always sufficient.

From Strategic Evidence Planning to Evidence Infrastructure

Gabriel Rhoads, a founding team member who helped architect SEP in its early years, describes this shift:

“We didn’t just want organizations to write evidence plans. We wanted them to build durable capability. We set out to build plans and provide implementation support, but we ended up building infrastructure.”

That term — “infrastructure” — changed what we thought practitioners actually needed, and it meant something specific.

Evidence infrastructure is not a report, dashboard, or a theory-of-change diagram. It is the integrated system — spanning governance, data architecture, analytic capability, decision routines, talent, and capital alignment — that ensures evidence is generated, prioritized, and used consistently over time. Think of it as the R&D engine for impact: the underlying architecture that makes improvement sustainable.

When evidence becomes infrastructure, the effects compound. Strategy and analytics reinforce each other, which makes decision making more disciplined and less reactive. Funders, seeing that rigor is built in rather than bolted on, shift their investments toward ongoing capacity rather than one-off evaluations. Learning becomes embedded in how organizations operate day to day. And over time, equity stops being a stated commitment and becomes a measurable outcome, built into the design of the work.

After a decade of work with practitioners, Project Evident and the SEP evolved to meet this broader need. Diagnostics became more sophisticated, implementation support deepened, and funder alignment became more central. Data governance and technology integration became essential, especially as AI-enabled systems expanded what is possible. However, our core commitment stayed the same:

Build what organizations actually need to achieve impact — not just what they are asked to report.

The Next Stage: From Evidence Building to Precision 

The next decade demands more than infrastructure. It demands precision.

Peter York, Chief Data Scientist, is helping lead this next stage. His work focuses on advancing precision causal modeling and strengthening organizations’ ability to understand not just whether programs work — but for whom, under what conditions, and why.

“Equitable outcomes require more than measurement,” Peter says. “It requires understanding causality at a granular level. If we don’t know what drives outcomes across different populations, we risk scaling inequity.”

Historically, advanced causal methods and precision modeling have been concentrated in academic institutions or elite research contexts. Project Evident’s commitment is to change that by democratizing access to core evidence capabilities. We aim to bring rigorous, decision-relevant analytics into the operational core of mission-driven organizations.

Matt Hillard, Senior Director and a key leader in implementation strategy, emphasizes the practical dimension of this ambition:

“Sophisticated modeling only matters if it shapes decisions. Our focus is on embedding these planning, learning, and doing capabilities inside durable systems — so leaders can act on  insights and progress toward causality in real time.”

At the operational level, this means weaving precision causal analysis into routine strategy. Sustaining this requires sequencing investments carefully and building internal capacity over time rather than outsourcing understanding to external providers. And as AI expands what’s possible, governance structures become essential — not as a constraint on the work, but as the condition that makes it trustworthy. None of this holds without funders willing to align their capital around long-term analytic capability rather than short-term deliverables.

Our next frontier is infrastructure + precision + equity for better, cheaper, faster outcomes.

Leadership in a Shifting Field

The language of “evidence strategy, “learning systems,” and “data-informed decision-making” is now widespread in the sector. That is real progress. But language is not infrastructure, and dashboards are not causality.

The gaps show up in predictable ways — learning systems that generate noise rather than insight, data practices that erode trust rather than build it, equity commitments that remain aspirational for lack of causal precision.

Project Evident’s work sits at the intersection of all three. The goal isn’t to simply help organizations learn from data. We help them determine what evidence is mission-critical, build the infrastructure to sustain it, and deepen analytic precision so decisions drive truly equitable outcomes.

This integrated approach makes organizations more efficient, delivering outcomes without the redundant reporting and evidence “slop” that drains capacity. Programs can be adapted more rapidly as learning accumulates. Interventions get targeted more precisely. And what works can be scaled with real confidence rather than just optimism. The cumulative result, when the system is working as it should, is equity — advanced through causal understanding rather than aspiration. 

In short, practitioners are themselves able to achieve better, cheaper, faster, and more equitable outcomes, at scale.

Built With Practitioners, Not For Them

A decade ago, the SEP was co-developed with practitioners navigating real constraints — limited capacity, fragmented systems, complex funding environments.

Kelly reflects:

“The most important insights didn’t come from theory. They came from leaders making hard decisions with imperfect information. The SEP evolved because practitioners pushed us to make it practical, implementable, and aligned with reality.”

That grounding remains central as we approach the next stage of this work. Practitioners and their funders are asking for more sophisticated support and tools that are tailored to their own contexts. They don’t need more knowledge and cost barriers from the traditional industries and providers that have provided technical assistance. They need practical, actionable solutions. Methods like precision modeling, for Project Evident, have never been academic exercises. They are practical tools that more and more practitioners can use independently or with limited support to make better decisions and advance their impact. What we’re building toward isn’t sophistication — it’s durability.

Advancing Evidence Infrastructure for Impact

Today, Project Evident is advancing evidence infrastructure as a defining priority for the field.

This means:

• Integrating strategic planning, implementation, R&D, and advanced analytics.
  
• Strengthening funder–practitioner alignment around long-term capability.
  
• Embedding responsible AI and data governance into infrastructure design.
  
• Democratizing access to tools like causal modeling.
  
• Centering equity as a structural outcome of disciplined evidence systems.
  

Gabriel puts it simply:

“The sector doesn’t need more dashboards. It needs durable systems (people, processes, tools, data) that help practitioners make better decisions in service of impact.”

The next decade will demand rigor, integration, and courage — to invest in long-term capability rather than short-term data reporting that doesn’t lead to impact.

Project Evident has spent years building toward this moment, not just helping organizations plan for evidence, but building the infrastructure — analytic, operational, and financial — that makes impact sustainable.

Precise enough to drive real decisions. Equitable enough to change real lives.