How Pew Is Using Stakeholder Networks to Transform Evidence Use

To ensure that evidence informs policy and practice in every field, thought leaders must learn about what is working in areas beyond their focus. The Pew Charitable Trusts facilitates learning across health, education, environment, international development, and other sectors to connect initiatives that aim to advance evidence-informed decision-making.

Pew’s evidence project has centered its work on two interconnected networks, the Transforming Evidence Funders Network (TEFN) and the Transforming Evidence Network (TEN), to coordinate ongoing efforts and build better, more efficient practices.

Transforming Evidence Funders Network

Along with the William T. Grant Foundation and other partners, the evidence project created TEFN to foster connections and coordinate efforts across the wide range of organizations that fund research and its use. To bridge differences in sector, national context, and field of focus, TEFN concentrates conversations on participants’ commonalities as grant makers and the levers they can use to boost the use of evidence in decision-making.

One area of focus for 2021 is identifying funding practices that can increase the use of evidence in policy and practice. Through the TEFN Grant Criteria Working Group, participants identify questions they can ask during the idea solicitation phase of their grant cycle to increase the chances that research investments will be beneficial and used in policy or practice.

The working group participants search for updates to grant criteria that can be made easily while they examine critical gaps in grant-making practice that require more attention and resources, such as how funders can build more diverse applicant and grantee pools.

Transforming Evidence Network

Soon, TEFN’s activities will connect with and inform the development of a new Transforming Evidence Network. TEN will include TEFN members and a broader array of research, policy, practice, and community stakeholders who are committed to building practical and accessible knowledge about how to improve the use of evidence in policy and practice.

To cultivate a diverse community, TEN will facilitate sessions this year that bring together leaders working across sectors, issue areas, and geographical locations to workshop critical issues in evidence use. Early gatherings will focus on the supports and capacities required to make evidence use efforts effective. For example, there is a critical role for actors who bridge gaps between the communities trying to share expertise and the groups attempting to put knowledge into practice. However, despite their importance, these actors—who are called knowledge brokers, boundary spanners, matchmakers, or intermediaries, depending on their field—are neither well understood nor well resourced. The evidence project is building networks to ensure that these critical connectors can learn from one another, troubleshoot common challenges, and build on promising practices together.

The evidence project is also planning a flagship convening in 2022 to connect all these efforts, celebrate successes, and advocate for the large-scale changes needed to support effective evidence production and use.

Angela Bednarek is a project director, Angie Boyce is an officer, and Ben Miyamoto is a principal associate with The Pew Charitable Trusts’ evidence project.