On Wednesday, April 8th, 12-1 pm, OPEN will be hosting a virtual presentation titled "Evaluation in the Age of AI: What Changes, What Doesn’t, and What Matters Most" by Charles Gasper.
Artificial intelligence is changing the way evaluators gather information, analyze data, interpret findings, and support learning. But the biggest questions are not only about efficiency or tools. They are also about accuracy, judgment, meaning-making, relationships, and what organizations will need from evaluators going forward. This session explores how AI is reshaping evaluation practice, what parts of the evaluator’s role it can take on, what parts remain essential to an evaluator, and how evaluators can adapt without losing the core of the craft.
More about our presenter:
Charles Gasper is an evaluator, strategist, and innovation-focused consultant whose work increasingly focuses on the intersection of evaluation, artificial intelligence, organizational learning, and strategy. With more than 30 years of experience across philanthropy, health, public media, nonprofit capacity building, organizational development, and strategic planning, he has helped foundations, nonprofits, and social-impact organizations design evaluation and learning approaches that strengthen decision-making, improve practice, and support long-term impact.
In recent years, Charles has devoted significant attention to the ways AI is beginning to reshape the work of evaluators and the organizations they support. His interest is not limited to how AI can speed up certain tasks or make analysis more efficient, but also the deeper implications for the field: how AI is changing expectations around evidence, interpretation, judgment, learning, and adaptation, and what that means for the role evaluators must play now. His work has included the development and exploration of AI-supported tools and ideas related to qualitative and integrative analysis, evaluative reasoning, organizational learning, and practical decision support.
That work builds on a broader career centered on helping organizations clarify what they are really trying to learn, develop the capacity to learn from their own efforts, and use what they find to improve programs, strategies, and systems. In addition to evaluation, Charles has worked extensively in strategic planning, organizational development, and capacity building, bringing a perspective that sees evaluation not as an isolated technical function, but as part of how organizations think, adapt, and move forward. He has long viewed the evaluator as more than a generator of findings: the evaluator is also a critical friend, a sense-maker, and a strategic partner who helps organizations ask better questions, understand what they are seeing, and make more thoughtful use of what they learn.
Charles is currently a Senior Consultant with the TCC Group, a co-founder of Lotus Rise, a technology firm focusing on issues specific to the social sector, and a life-long learner. He holds a Masters in Science (Research) from Saint Louis University, a Masters of Arts from Claremont Graduate University, and has a Certificate in Evaluation from CGU. He has served as the first Director of Evaluation for the Missouri Foundation for Health, as Director of Evaluation for the Nine Network of Public Media, and held additional related roles in research institutions and health systems.
