Culturally Responsive Evaluation as the Compass: Cultivating Community Engagement and Shared Leadership within Constraints

What does it look like to truly share leadership in evaluation when brought in late, the budget is tight, and the scope is already set? In this paper, we reflect on our experience evaluating small-scale behavioral health programs in San Mateo County, CA, where we were not involved in the original design but were committed to centering community voice and equity through culturally responsive evaluation (CRE). We got creative: developing materials for partners to lead focus groups, co-facilitating advisory groups, and beginning each partnership with CRE-focused discussions. We made space for regular trust-building check-ins, helping to ease apprehension and gradually shift power dynamics. Over time, this led to collaboratively interpreting findings and creating deliverables tailored for multiple audiences. This paper shares the small but powerful strategies that helped us engage community and share leadership, even when the structure was not conducive, offering tools for evaluators working in similar realities.