What would happen if commissioning evaluation was designed around relationships rather than transactions? This question sparked a lively discussion at the 2024 AES Conference and continued through a year-long mentoring journey that brought together evaluators, commissioners, researchers and consultants from across sectors. ​​

For those of us present, it was clear that the discussion needed to continue and we took this up as the theme for a 2025 AES Group Mentoring.

Our mentoring group explored the topic through the diverse experiences of members working across government, academia and the not-for-profit sector, in roles spanning commissioning, evaluation and research. Commissioning is more than just procurement or purchasing of services. The group discussed it in terms of long term and trust-based relationships between commissioners, evaluators and communities. The focus is on improving outcomes that are person-centred and place based.​

Discussions ranged across power asymmetries between funders, evaluators and communities; data literacy and sovereignty; institutional reform; evaluation capability; governance systems; and, importantly, stories of success that illustrated what helps create more relational approaches to commissioning.

We shared many of our experiences in an exploratory session at the 2025 AES International Evaluation Conference in Canberra. Several AES Fellows also facilitated a separate workshop on the topic of transitioning towards relational approaches and together these conversations are moving forward the thinking on what relational commissioning can look like in practice.​

Relational commissioning happens across sectors

So where does relational commissioning happen?

The short answer: everywhere!

Across our mentoring discussions and aes25 exploratory session, a consistent theme emerged: relational commissioning is already occurring in many different contexts, although it is not always described using that language.

Inside government departments

Evaluators, whether embedded in specific programs or working across departments, are trying to shift the norm away from one-off, compliance-driven engagements. By focusing on building genuine connections with program teams, they act as an internal bridge. They help align expectations, strengthen evaluation capability and support better use of evidence across organisations.

In small consultancies

Teams observe relational commissioning develop over multiple engagements with the same client. Seeing each client as a potential 'repeated game' encourages them to prioritise cooperation over competition and build trusted relationships that pay off in the long term. Maintaining the relationship can be challenging when an established client contact moves into different roles or organisations.

Among university departments responding to tenders

Teams are actively resisting the competition between different departments bidding for the same work. Instead, they take a collaborative approach, jointly bidding alongside subject matter experts and sharing opportunities as they arise.

Through long-term research partnerships

Stable funding arrangements can reduce the need for constant tendering and allow organisations to focus on responsiveness, collaboration and learning. Participants described how these arrangements can help break down silos by supporting engagement across multiple parts of an agency.

Yet intent alone is not enough. Several participants described situations where a highly relational design process reverted to transactional practices once formal procurement or grant processes began. This highlighted a recurring challenge: sustaining relational approaches through the systems that ultimately govern funding and commissioning decisions.d confined to isolated stages of the evaluation process rather than being applied systematically across the evaluation cycle. There was limited consolidated guidance showing evaluators how to operationalise feminist principles coherently and consistently in crisis contexts.

Why relational aspirations often struggle in practice​

Evaluators and commissioners both described difficulties they had come across when attempting to commission or deliver research in new ways. Here we identified from the discussion some of the reasons why commissioning evaluation might not be as relational as we would like.

Relational aspirations are held inside transactional systems

Members of the aes25 exploratory session panel and audience members panel described efforts to develop relational approaches within systems that are fundamentally designed to support transactional ways of working. Participants spoke about operating in environments where compliance requirements, risk management and procurement processes often shape decision-making, even when there is a desire to work differently. As one participant explained, there is "a high level of scrutiny on the kind of investments and procurements that we make", highlighting the limited agency many practitioners feel they have to adopt more relational approaches.

Fairness and probity may be understood too narrowly

Questions arose in the exploratory session about the interpretation of fairness and whether this actually reflected community needs - and asked "fair to who?". It was suggested that in some circumstances probity is interpreted too narrowly, with fairness focused on money and process rather than fairness to communities, users and evaluators.

One panellist explained "Probity is about equity and fairness. But do we need to expand this definition? Because [the current definition] is equity and fairness around money. Maybe not so equitable or fair for the communities, for the people involved."

Competitive tendering can undermine the conditions relational approaches depend on

Evaluators in the audience identified standard competitive processes that can make relational approaches much harder to establish in practice. Competitive procurement risks undermining the trust, openness and collaboration relational commissioning depends on. It can also create real costs for providers through unpaid proposal development. It places the burden on the evaluators and can damage trust when there isn't a relational process around unsuccessful applications.

Providing comprehensive, honest and useful feedback to all applications may contribute to addressing this by giving providers feedback to assist in future opportunities rather than generic and high-level responses that don't support growth or trust building.

Other ways to build trust and openness are to allow conversations with providers during the proposal development process, and to share information about the expected budget range for the work.

Relational commissioning is interpreted as only working with people in your network

A recurring question was how relational commissioning can remain inclusive and equitable. One audience member questioned "Does relational commissioning need to be with someone you already know? How does it work if you don't know them already?" Participants noted that relationship-based approaches can unintentionally favour people and organisations already known to commissioners. The tension here then is about creating opportunities for new relationships to form while maintaining the trust and partnership that relational approaches depend upon.

Strategies to support relational approaches

Despite these challenges, participants identified several practical ways to support more relational approaches to commissioning.

Start small and build confidence

Commissioners can start with small contracts to cover small chunks of an evaluation project and build them up over time to form a larger piece of work. Discovery phases, capability-building activities and targeted pieces of work can help commissioners and providers test relationships, build trust and establish ways of working before moving into larger projects.

Assessing evaluation readiness before going to market can also reduce risk and improve outcomes. One example discussed involved beginning with a small piece of specialist work before expanding into a larger partnership. This approach allows both parties to build confidence in the relationship while demonstrating value in a lower-risk environment.

Recognise that relational and transactional approaches are not opposites

Relational and transactional approaches do not need to be treated as mutually exclusive. Strong relationships can coexist with robust governance, clear contracts and transparent procurement processes. Collaborative design processes, seed funding and structured engagement approaches can remain within probity requirements while creating space for stronger relationships.

Make friends with your procurement team

Building constructive relationships with procurement colleagues can create opportunities to explore different options, develop shared understanding and identify approaches that satisfy both probity requirements and relational ambitions. A participant shared the advice to engage with the procurement team early on so that "they start to understand what value you have as a lever to change the quality of the commissioning that you do, and you get to actually drive the conversation around what that looks like and who you engage with the best."

Respect bidders' time

Broad procurement exercises can impose significant costs on providers, particularly small consultancies and specialist organisations. Providing clear information, transparent expectations and meaningful feedback to unsuccessful bidders can be simple but powerful ways of acting relationally.

Act relationally throughout the process

Finally, relational commissioning is not only about procurement models. It is also about day-to-day behaviours. Participants highlighted the importance of transparency, responsiveness, capability building and actively supporting positive relationships between commissioners, evaluators and program teams. Small actions, applied consistently, can have a significant impact on trust and collaboration over time.

Relational commissioning is not a single method or model. Across our mentoring discussions and aes25 conversations, it emerged in many different forms and contexts. While significant barriers remain, the examples shared suggest that relatively small shifts in how we design procurement, build partnerships and engage with evaluators can have a meaningful impact. We look forward to continuing the conversation and hearing more examples of what relational commissioning looks like in practice. 

This post was written by Sigrid Patterson, Rae Fry, Giulia Capuzzo, Eunice Sotelo, Faye Forbes, Stephanie Button, Lotti O'Dea and Leili Friedlander.