. That was the first time I saw evaluation might be a thing. The beauty of an American university is that it has an open library. I just went in, found some books on the topic, read them, got an idea about the general principle, and applied. And they hired me,” Natalia Kosheleva explains.

Irina Sinelina, a specialist in program and project evaluation at International Labor Organization (ILO), received her Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management in the United States and interned at a nonprofit organization in New York. Then she returned to Moscow and got her first job at a nonprofit organization, where she was to analyze the effectiveness of trainings, before coming to work at the International Labor Organization, as an evaluation officer.

“Like all UN organizations, ILO has an internal evaluation system. This is done for the purpose of donor accountability, increased experience, and work improvement. Like the rest of the UN system, we follow the standard criteria developed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). There are five basic principles: relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, and impact. Two years ago, another one was added – coherence,” Irina Sinelina says.

Marina Mikhailova learned the principles and approaches to evaluation (including organizational development evaluation and personnel evaluation) from Process Consulting and the Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center, and international schools.

“All the small pieces got together, one after another, to build the big theoretical experience. In practice, it is, first of all, extensive experience in evaluating projects submitted for grant competitions. We, at the Garant Center, have been organizing these contests since 2001 in Arkhangelsk Region. Later I took part in reviewing applications for other contests and evaluating the results of the projects we had supported. I also had some experience in evaluation from the times I was the director of a recruitment agency. as such, I had to evaluate personnel and the management system in the organization,” Marina Mikhailova continues.

The topic of knowledge and competencies in evaluation is closely related to the topic of learning. If we know what the competencies are needed, we know what to teach them, and how to write job descriptions.

Since the late 1980s, various professional associations of evaluators started publishing lists of competencies. For example, the UN Evaluation Group believes that an evaluator should have basic professional competencies, technical skills, management skills, interpersonal skills, and promote a culture of evaluation.

Canada, a country that has established a certification system for evaluators, suggests the following areas of competence for a practicing evaluation specialist[18]:

1. Reflexive – competencies related to fundamental norms and values in the field of evaluation, as well as awareness of one’s own expertise and needs for professional growth.

2. Technical – competencies related to specific aspects of evaluation: planning, data collection, data analysis, reporting.

3. Situational – competencies related to evaluative thinking applied to analyze and consider the interests, problems, and circumstances specific to each evaluation.

4. Managerial – competencies related to the project/evaluation management process (budgeting, resourcing, management).

5. Interpersonal – competencies related to communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, cooperation.