Valuing cultural expertise – in $$ terms

While at Claremont Graduate University doing my doctoral studies, I was lucky enough to take a class with management guru Dr. Peter Drucker. Although not an expert in culturally responsive evaluation by any stretch of the imagination, he had a piece of advice that has stuck in my mind, and that IMHO needs to be better applied in the area of culturally responsive evaluation:

It’s important that you charge people enough to make sure they listen to what you have to say.

I’m not sure how much this applies around the world, but my limited knowledge strongly suggests that too many high caliber evaluators with outstanding cultural expertise are undercharging for their services.

Seriously. Think about it: How do the Big Four consulting/accounting firms have such respect in some circles? It’s not just the quality of their work or the caliber of their consultants. One way that they help shape perceptions of both of these is by pricing their consultants’ time to convey that it should be considered high value.

I mentioned in an earlier post that some of the tell-tale signs of whether a proposed evaluation was genuine about cultural responsiveness are:

• who it chooses for its cultural experts (seasoned professionals as a priority);
• where they are positioned in the evaluation team (high-influence roles); and
• how they are priced (high enough to show that the skills are highly valued relative to those with other mixes of expertise).

I am reminded of an earlier quote from Vidhya Shanker in our January 2010 JMDE article (with Nan Wehipeihana and Kate McKegg):

I just want to add something in regard to the student’s use of the word “assistants” and the wage s/he listed. Nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations—and, indeed, govern­ment agencies—routinely benefit from the border-crossing/code-switching skills of people of color and indigenous people, which extend far beyond verbal language alone, without ever recognizing or remunerating those skills. Moving between two (or more) worlds requires great expertise that people from dominant groups have the privilege of never having to cultivate. It is laughable that this student thought s/he could design an evaluation for another community and then receive assistance from them in delivering it to them. But it happens all the time, right in front of my face.

I completely agree with Vidhya and want to extend that sentiment to the next level. It’s not just how others price the services of evaluators with high levels of cultural expertise in a particular context; it’s about how cultural experts price their own services to ensure that they clearly convey the value of what they do.

If you charge graduate student consulting rates, people will think that’s the quality/value of service you are offering.

If you are relatively new to the evaluation profession but come to it with valuable life and other work experience, don’t ignore that experience when it comes to how you price your services as an evaluator. The value you can bring to an evaluation team will generally be much higher than a much younger person who’s spent more time working as an evaluator. When engaging with a community, your connections, your track record, your credibility, and (yes!) any gray hair are worth *gold* to the project’s credibility, utility and validity.

Think, also, of the new up-and-coming evaluators with much less life experience. If you price yourself where they should be, less ‘life experienced’ evaluators will feel they have to price themselves even lower. The effect is that they will hardly be able to survive financially long enough to build all that experience!

I do appreciate that humility is an important value in many cultures (as it is in New Zealand culture generally, to some extent), and that many of these evaluators work in communities that cannot afford expensive evaluation. Rather than discounting rates for particular clients or charging a low rate across the board, I would advocate pricing for the true value of services, but retaining the option of throwing in some additional time pro bono on a particular project.

It is in ALL of our best interests to ensure that cultural expertise is recognized, privileged in the contexts where it is sorely needed, and valued – both financially and otherwise – in ways that will help the evaluation profession lift its game in this area.