Libby Cooper

Libby Cooper has more than twenty years experience of working with civil society and public sector organisations in the UK and internationally.

In 1990 she founded Charities Evaluation Services in the UK, was its Director for eleven years and became known as one of the most important specialists in evaluation, and the promotion of outcome and impact measurement, within the civil society sector. Prior to that, in the early 1980s she founded and directed the Community Research Advisory Centre and lectured in Social Research at North London University.

She has managed programmes for a wide selection of donors (Governments, multilateral and bilateral agencies, Foundations, Corporates); conducted programmatic and project evaluations; designed funding programmes; advised donors on their funding strategies, assessment procedures and their monitoring and evaluation policies; advised and provided training to NGOs in organisational development, resource mobilisation, management, strategic planning and evaluation and she has conducted a variety of research studies in the UK and abroad.

She was responsible for managing the production of a quality assurance system for NGOs – now used by thousands of NGOs in the UK – which has been replicated in Croatia. She conducted two social capital studies in Croatia during 2004.