Six Things Small Local Evaluation Firms Bring to the Table

When funders talk about wanting evaluations that are relevant, accurate, and grounded in community reality — they are describing exactly what small, local evaluation firms are built to do.

Here are the six strengths that Hippolyt Pul and Carlisle Levine lay out in their open letter to funders.

1. They're locally rooted.

In many cases, the lead evaluators are from the communities being evaluated, or have close ties to them. That means they know the culture and how people relate to each other. They can build trust quickly. They can ask questions that feel relevant to the people they are talking to. They can collect data in ways that fit the context. And they can make sense of what they hear through the right lens — not an outside one.

2. They're highly networked.

Small local firms can quickly pull together strong teams through their networks of other small and solo local evaluators. They can work across different countries and cultures. They can give clients a single point of contact while drawing on deep local knowledge. This makes their work more grounded and more useful than what a single large firm can offer.

3. They provide quick and easy access to local evaluators.

Trust shapes what people are willing to share. Small local firms already have ties to local evaluators from many different groups — including those that are often left out. The more local the evaluator, the faster they earn trust, the better they design their data collection, and the more clearly they understand what they hear.

4. They're innovative.

Small firms have the freedom to try new approaches built for specific questions in specific places. And because they know the local context well, their new approaches are more likely to actually fit — rather than being borrowed from somewhere else and forced to work.

5. They have relevant experience.

Many small local evaluation firms are made up of senior evaluators with deep experience — not just in evaluation, but in hands-on program work before that. That background gives them a clearer view of the programs they are looking at. They know what questions to ask and what to dig into beyond the first answer they get.

6. They're responsive.

Small firms work through fewer levels of decision-making. That means they can move faster, reach their networks more quickly, and adjust when needs change. Their work depends on the relationships they build — so being responsive is not just a nice feature. It is how they operate.

These six strengths come directly from the open letter by Hippolyt Pul and Carlisle Levine of the Strengthening Evaluation Contracting Partnerships Initiative. You can read the full letter here.