an expertise, not a profession. But 15–20 years ago, it was merely a discussion between specialists; today the situation has changed greatly. On the one hand, there is a lot more talking about evaluation. On the other hand, every applicant in the presidential and other grant competitions needs to evaluate the results of their projects. In addition, there are more educational products that teach self-evaluation,” Marina Mikhailova says.

There are contests rewarding people and organizations that pay attention to evaluation, she continues. The expert community started looking at the annual reports to see whether they contain information about the evaluation of the organization’s performance. They also started realizing that evaluation is not the tool of a few super-specialist, but something everyone has to do, one way or another. Sometimes employees of organizations are just unaware of this.

Evaluation has come a long way towards professionalization, but it still has a long way to go, says Natalia Kosheleva, president of the Association of Specialists in Program and Policy Evaluation, a consultant on monitoring and evaluation of socially oriented programs and projects.

“Any profession is constantly evolving in some direction. Professions are becoming more and more niche, evaluation is no exception. It’s a small profession, but it’s growing pretty fast,” she says.

WHERE DO EVALUATION SPECIALISTS COME FROM?

There are not as many people around the world with a degree in evaluation as there are lawyers or economists. Our colleagues in the West have Master’s and PhD degree programs in evaluation, but given its interdisciplinary nature, the number of people in this profession is not determined by the number of those who received a University degree, experts say.

So where do specialists in evaluation come from, and how do they build a professional career? Alexey Kuzmin says that the Association of American, Canadian, and European specialists in evaluation, which has several thousand members each, consists of people with very different backgrounds.

“Let me list: just in terms of the underlying education, there are psychologists, sociologists, educators, medics, engineers, computer technology specialists, economists, managers, statisticians. Of course, if you graduated from a University program where you received training in sociological research methods, it’s a good help,” he says.

The expert himself came to the evaluation in the late 1990s from organizational development consulting. In 1999 he became a member of the American Evaluation Association, attended conferences and seminars abroad, read literature in English, and in 2001 he decided to attend a PhD program in the United States, specializing in organizational behavior and program evaluation.

“A lot of people overseas that I know of have professional careers as internal evaluation specialists. This is, of course, common in large companies. The common denominator for all stories is that at some point a person faces the need for evaluation, and something resonates inside, they find it exciting. And that’s where you start a turn in this direction – searching for information, training, searching for specialists who do this,” says Alexey Kuzmin.

Elena Malitskaya also cites 1998–1999 as the years in which her work became closely tied to evaluation. “At that time, we at the Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center were conducting our own grant competitions. So we had a need for monitoring, evaluation and training. We just started integrating evaluation into our work routine and into the work of our network of resource centers. In 2000, we held the first school of evaluation and international conference in Novosibirsk, which eventually grew into regular activities,” Elena Malitskaya says.

Alena Bogomolova, head of the Resource and Methodological Center of the Road Home Charitable Foundation and a board member of the Association of Specialists in Program and Policy Evaluation, is one of those who received training from SCISC and The Garant Center at the International School of Evaluation. Alena Bogomolova is a sociologist by education. She says she had done many practical projects during her University years that were related to evaluation in one way or another, except that it was called differently at the time. “It was called sociological support in the early 2000s, at least in Cherepovets. But the set of activities was the same as what we now call evaluation, or evaluation design. I have studied before, I am studying now, and I will continue to study, because evaluation is a constantly evolving profession,” she says.

Irina Efremova-Garth and Natalia Kosheleva received their Master’s degrees from American universities. Irina earned her MPA (Master of Public Administration) from the School of Public Administration at the University of Delaware.

“In my two years of training, my schedule included classes on various research methods, on evaluation in general, on evaluation in nonprofit organizations. It was so delicious, so interesting, and so exciting that all my plans to go into the government went straight to the bottom of my priority list. I returned to Moscow realizing that I would be involved in evaluation and nonprofit organizations,” the expert continues.

She says she has been in different roles: the customer of evaluation, internal evaluator, and external evaluator. Her work at IBM had given her some interesting insights: data-savvy and digitally savvy nonprofits are much more likely to achieve their mission, to be able to prove their contribution to addressing the social problem at hand.

Natalia Kosheleva learned about evaluation during her Master’s degree studies at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

“It was March 1996. I came across a vacancy announcement for a specialist to evaluate two environmental projects funded by IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board). 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