Donald W. Compton, the first director of evaluation services at the National Home Office (Atlanta) of the American Cancer Society, tells the story of building the unit in conditions of high demand and a limited budget. Along the way, evaluation was brought to regional divisions and to local offices in part as a response to United Way and to his work organizing training. The strategy for unit development and for sustaining the work was the Collaborative Evaluation Fellows Project. This proved to be an effective strategy of building evaluation capacity (ECB), then a newly conceptualized model of evaluation managing. Compton tells about the work and draws lessons for managing ECB. (Contains 1 table.)