Open Call for Expressions of Interest to Provide Evaluation And Learning Support

The Future Skills Centre is a forward-thinking centre for research and collaboration dedicated to preparing Canadians for employment success and meeting the emerging talent needs of employers. As a pan-Canadian community, we bring together experts and organizations across sectors to rigorously identify, assess, and share innovative approaches to develop the skills and work environments to drive prosperity and inclusion.

The Future Skills Centre (FSC) supports innovative skills development projects that address
emerging workforce needs and test new training approaches. Its portfolio includes small
community-based initiatives and large-scale collaborations with educational institutions,
non-profits, and private sector associations. These projects generate insights and foster
experimentation across Canada’s skills development ecosystem.

Evaluation, learning and contextual approaches are integral to FSC’s mission, providing project partners and stakeholders with evidence of impact, fostering accountability to funders and communities, and supporting continuous improvement through shared learning. FSC works with a wide array of project partners from coast to coast to coast in Canada, and we seek to build evidence of what works, for whom, and under what conditions.

Evaluation & learning underpin our work, as project partners who are funded through FSC
agree to collaborate on measuring and learning alongside us – in order to generate and share
knowledge beyond the project itself. In order to do this successfully, FSC engages with a range of external evaluation partners to support project partners, ensuring evaluations are tailored to the unique contexts and goals of each initiative. These partnerships will use diverse
methods—qualitative, quantitative, or mixed—to align with project needs while generating
actionable insights.

FSC’s projects focus on five strategic areas designed to tackle key challenges within specific
sectors, populations, or areas of focus. These Focus Areas represent important and pressing
skills and labour market development challenges in Canada. Each focus area includes
pressing strategic questions that represent gaps in knowledge and/or practice – and around
which our investment strategies are oriented. Evaluation will help to generate knowledge
around these strategic questions.

The external evaluators will be responsible for the following:

1. Evaluation Design

● Collaborate with FSC and individual project teams to co-create an evaluation & learning plan for each assigned project

● Clarify roles and responsibilities with project partners, particularly around data collection and analysis*

*Note: Many project partners already collect administrative data and use feedback mechanisms during program delivery. Evaluators should work collaboratively with partners to use this data in the evaluation process – always seeking to build capacity for organizations to integrate data processes in their program activities. Any evaluator-conducted data collection should be complementary and not duplicative.

2. Support data collection

● Support project partners with data design and collection (the level of support will vary per partner).

● Ensure the evaluation & learning plan includes FSC’s required metrics.

● As needed, collect relevant supplementary data through interviews, focus groups, surveys, and other methods.

● Ensure the ethical collection and handling of data, including obtaining informed consent from participants.

3. Data Analysis

● Analyze quantitative and qualitative data to identify relevant learnings.

● Organize lessons by strategic questions, in order to drive strategic use of the resulting evidence and insights for policy and program adaptation.

4. Sharing & Reporting

● Prepare regular “learning memos” to provide reflective feedback to project partners on the evaluation process and emerging results. Learning memos will assist partners with integrating real-time feedback for continuous improvement.

● Meet regularly with project partners and FSC to discuss progress, identify opportunities for improvement and troubleshoot emerging issues.

● Prepare a final evaluation report and a summary insights report (templates/guidance will be provided).

The ideal evaluation partners will have:

● Proven experience in program/project evaluation, particularly in sectors related to skills
and labour market development (please refer to our Focus Areas Brief for further details
about the main thematic areas in which we are involved)
● Expertise in both qualitative and quantitative research methods.
● Familiarity with the geographic and cultural context of the projects.
● A strong understanding of equity, diversity, inclusion, and Reconciliation (EDI&R)
principles, with experience integrating these into evaluation frameworks and
methodologies.
● Excellent analytical and writing skills, including conveying complexity through clear and
direct language and non-academic audiences.
● A commitment to collaborative evaluation practice, including leveraging existing
administrative data and providing regular feedback and insights throughout the
evaluation process.
● Demonstrated commitment to ethical evaluation practices.