Anita M. Baker, Ed.D.     Making program evaluation accessible to all.

Training & Conferences

Evaluation Services current trainings, conferences and projects.  Resources for download listed by project.  

Current Projects:


Resources & Tools

  • For Nonprofit Organizations
  • For Philanthropic Organization

Clients & References

Project Clearinghouse

An interactive online Project Clearinghouse is one of our newest developments. The clearinghouse is intended to be a rich online resource for nonprofit and funding organizations exploring ways to build evaluative capacity​. Extensive data available to review from a variety of our successful projects.

About Anita Baker and Evaluation Services


I am a sole proprietor doing business as Evaluation Services. I have worked as an evaluator for more than 20 years, including more than 15 as an independent consultant. I specialize in conducting external evaluations of non-profit programs and organizations, and in providing training and technical assistance in groups or individually to organizations conducting self-assessments or participatory evaluations. I earned my Doctorate in Education from Columbia University, Teacher’s College in 1991, (Educational Administration with a focus on Evaluation). I formerly served as a project director and senior program officer of the Academy for Educational Development School and Community Services in New York City, and as a project director at the OMG Center for Collaborative Learning in Philadelphia.   

My evaluation work has included designing, directing and participating on evaluation teams focused on a wide range of subjects including youth development, arts education, community-based collaborations and integrated services, afterschool education, employment and training, foster care and transitional and supportive housing, elder services and grantmaking, and organizational evaluation capacity building. I have provided evaluation training to more than 50 nonprofit organizations, and to several philanthropic organizations, and have developed a comprehensive set of training reference materials and activities.

As a full-time evaluation consultant, I take a service and support approach to my work and it is always guided by the following convictions:   

Evaluation is a core management function. Effective leaders and program providers need to know what is working and what could be strengthened or discontinued, and whether and how their efforts make a difference. Thoughtful, systematic collection and analysis of information about their work – evaluation – can get them those answers.   Evaluative Thinking is part of everyday work and can be applied to many organizational functions. Reflective practice enhances all efforts, and evaluative thinking is a type of reflective practice that incorporates use of systematically collected data to inform organizational actions.

Important features of evaluation work can successfully be taught to professionals from the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors through use of systematic curricula, active learning and project-based experiences. This includes learning about evaluation design and logic, evaluation data collection, analysis of data, development of action steps, and communication of findings.   

Evaluation work is multi-faceted. There are always social, political, and technical components to evaluation and there are multiple ways to address most evaluation needs.