Browse Evaluation Approach Resources
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"Participatory Performance Story Reporting" Clear Horizon, an M&E company in Australia, describes its participatory approach, specifically as it relates to the method of performance story reporting (PPSR). The company defines performance story reports as "essentially a short report about how a program contributed to outcomes." This page on their website includes links to other pages that describe the structure, process, and limitations of this the PPSR method. Author: Clear Horizon Type: Websites & Online Tools Date: Dec 31, 2008 Be the first to review this resource! Download (161.39 KB) -
5 Evaluation Lessons From a Recovering Program Officer (Presentation slides) As a profession, evaluators must constantly demonstrate the value of their work to remain relevant. Each evaluation represents a significant investment in resources that many argue could be used to provide more programming. Author: Will Fenn Type: Presentation Slides Date: Oct 17, 2013 Point K Pick Be the first to review this resource! Download (4.05 MB) -
5 Evaluation Lessons from a Recovering Program Officer (recording) As a profession, evaluators must constantly demonstrate the value of their work to remain relevant. Each evaluation represents a significant investment in resources that many argue could be used to provide more programming. A primary concern of maintaining the value proposition of the evaluation field is ensuring that evaluations remain manageable and useful to all participants. The Ignite session offered five succinct lessons from a former foundation Program Officer that can be applied across program types to help nonprofits and foundations improve evaluation coordination and use. Author: Will Fenn Type: Websites & Online Tools Date: Oct 17, 2013 Be the first to review this resource! Web Link -
A Guide to Actionable Measurement Staff members from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation discuss the principles and practices they use to make decisions about data collection, analysis, and reporting. Their approach, "actionable measurement," emphasizes the collection of information for specific decisions or actions.
UPDATE: We had a broken link here. It was updated on Jan. 13, 2011.
Author: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Type: Research & Reports Date: May 10, 2010
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A Guide to Measuring Advocacy and Policy This guide provides some perspective on where the field of philanthropy has been with regard to evaluation of advocacy and policy and also acknowledges the unique issues and challenges associated with measuring these efforts. In addition, this guide serves as an invitation to grantmakers to engage in and expand thinking about evaluation as it relates to advocacy and policy efforts. As seriously as many grantmakers take their investments in this area, foundations should also take seriously the need to advance evaluation of advocacy and policy work.
Author: Prepared for Annie E. Casey Foundation Research by Organizational Research Services Type: Research & Reports Date: Jan 1, 2007 Be the first to review this resource! Download (255.04 KB) -
A Practical Guide to Evaluating Systems Change in a Human Services System Context This Guide is for evaluators who would like a practical “way in” to thinking about systems and systemschange. The key practical step the Guide takes is to limit the type of system to be evaluated to aparticular type of system (a type that systems change initiatives often target): a human servicesdelivery system (e.g. health, education, workforce development, etc.).Author: Nancy Latham Type: Research & Reports Date: Jan 1, 2015 Be the first to review this resource! Download (1.03 MB) -
Advocacy & Public Policy Grantmaking: Matching Process to Purpose The Colorado Trust, in an effort to better understand the field of funding advocacy and public policy work, commissioned this publication to describe strategies funders use; advantages and tradeoffs to funding advocacy; implications for funders, advocates, and evaluation; and implications for the outcomes the Colorado Trust is working towards. It identifies three buckets of funding strategies that have emerged: the policy target approach, the advocacy niche approach, and the field building approach.
Author: Tanya Beer, Pilar Stella Ingargiola, Meghann Flynn Beer Type: Research & Reports Date: Aug 1, 2012 Be the first to review this resource! Download (379.48 KB) -
Advocacy and evaluation: national organizations as advocates Canadian Evaluation Society's approach to advocating evaluation at the national level, focusing on transnational sharing of evaluation knowledge to promote the use of evaluation in society. Author: Joe Kpachevsky, Marie-Hélène Adrien, & Charles Lusthaus Type: Research & Reports Date: Sep 1, 2000 Be the first to review this resource! Download (33.25 KB) -
Advocacy Evaluation Update #9 In This Issue:
1. Feature: Framework of Factors that Affect Political Support
Why do some issues receive priority attention from political leaders while others receive very little? Political scientist Jeremy Shiffman has developed a framework that offers a response to this question.
2. Spotlight: Evaluating Community Organizing
Catherine Crystal Foster and Justin Louie identify what to consider when evaluating community organizing efforts. They also offer example benchmarks and methods for capturing organizing outcomes.
Author: Julia Coffman (ed.) Type: Newsletters & Periodicals Date: May 1, 2010 Be the first to review this resource! Download (329.6 KB) -
Advocacy Impact Assessment Guidelines This publication reviews what advocacy is, how NGOs can use it, and considerations for evaluating it. The publication outlines five "dimensions of change":
Author: Lloyd-Laney, Megan Type: Workbooks & Guides Date: Mar 24, 2003 Be the first to review this resource! Download (208.15 KB) -
An Ecological Understanding of Evaluation Use: A Case Study of the Active for Life Evaluation This document presents a case study of use of an evaluation of Active for Life: Increasing Physical Activity Levels in Adults Age 50 and Older a program sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The breadth of both the program and the evaluation created additional ways of thinking about evaluation use–what it looks like, where you find it and how to connect it.
Author: Judith Ottoson and Diane Martinez, Type: Research & Reports Date: Jun 1, 2010 Be the first to review this resource! Download (847.79 KB) -
An Evaluation Approach for an Environmental Think Tank and Advocacy Organization Johanna Morariu described how Innovation Network worked with the Post Carbon Institute to develop an organizational evaluation framework. We developed and fine tuned several assessment areas for think tank evaluation and advocacy evaluation with interview data collected from key informants. Then, in consultation with key staff from the Post Carbon Institute, we created an organizational theory of change. The theory contains information about the organization’s mission; audiences; strategies; focusing events, crises, and windows of opportunity; desired shifts, and impact. Author: Johanna Morariu Type: Opinion (blog, editorial) Date: Apr 19, 2011 Be the first to review this resource! Web Link -
Can we obtain the required rigour without randomisation? Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating in the international development sector need credible, reliable feedback on whether their interventions are making a meaningful difference but they struggle with how they can practically access it. Impact evaluation is research and, like all credible research, it takes time, resources, and expertise to do well, and – despite being under increasing pressure – most NGOs are not set up to rigorously evaluate the bulk of their work.
Author: Karl Hughes and Claire Hutchings Type: Research & Reports Date: Aug 1, 2011 Be the first to review this resource! Download (347.42 KB) -
Champions and “Champion-ness”: Measuring Efforts to Create Champions for Policy Change Creating “policy champions” who can bring about changes in public policy is central to many advocacy
projects. As advocacy advisors and evaluators for nonprofits and foundations, we work with a broad variety
of clients. Whether they aspire to increase access to contraception in Tanzania or to playgrounds in South
Central Los Angeles, we are likely to hear that identifying, informing, supporting or engaging policy champions is
a key element of their strategy.Author: David Devlin-Foltz and Lisa Molinaro Type: Research & Reports Date: Aug 31, 2010 Point K Pick
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Community Action Resources for Inuit, Métis and First Nations: Evaluating This kit is a self-help tool for Aboriginal people who want to get a community development project off the ground. The series of six manuals contains information, tips, examples and ready-to-use charts that you can copy and use for yourself or to train others in your community. It is intended to be user-friendly, emphasizing questions such as what, why, when and how to accomplish the different steps of a community development project.
Author: Health Canada Type: Websites & Online Tools Date: May 7, 2007
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Evaluating Social Innovation In this paper, the authors explore ways that common evaluation approaches and practices constrain innovation and offer lessons about an emerging evaluation approach—developmental evaluation—which supports the adaptation that is so crucial to innovation. For what kinds of grantmaking strategies should funders consider using developmental evaluation? What organizational conditions are necessary for it to work? How can grantmakers grapple with the challenging questions that developmental evaluation raises about innovation, accountability, rigor, and adaptation? Author: Hallie Preskill and Tanya Beer Type: Research & Reports Date: Aug 1, 2012 Point K Pick Be the first to review this resource! Download (341.7 KB) -
Evaluating Social Justice Advocacy: A Values Based Approach Although social justice is a concept inherent in many advocacy efforts, it often remains unspoken or is
ignored during the evaluation process. In some ways, the use of a social justice lens when evaluating
advocacy should be self-evident. If advocacy efforts aim for social justice outcomes, evaluations should look
for evidence that such outcomes have been achieved. But understanding just what social justice means can
be a challenge, as can knowing how to look for it in the context of complex and often long-term advocacy efforts.Author: Barbara Klugman Type: Research & Reports Date: Aug 1, 2010 Point K Pick Be the first to review this resource! Download (334.73 KB) -
Evaluation A Beginners Guide This document aims to present a user-friendly approach to the process of evaluation. It is
particularly targeted at those involved in programs working towards the introduction of human
rights concepts and values in educational curricula and teaching practices, who are initiating an
evaluation for the first time. It contains practical suggestions on how to effectively organize the
evaluation of such programs in order to learn from the work implemented so far.Author: Amnesty International Type: Workbooks & Guides Date: Jun 30, 1999
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Evaluation for Improvement: A Seven-Step Empowerment Evaluation Approach This manual is designed to help violence prevention organizations hire an empowerment evaluator who will assist them in building their evaluation capacity through a learn-by-doing process of evaluating their own strategies. It is for state and local leaders and staff members of organizations, coalitions, government agencies, and/or partnerships working to prevent violence. Some parts of the manual may also be useful to empowerment evaluators who work with these organizations. Author: Pamela J. Cox, Dana Keener, Tiffanee L. Woodard, & Abraham J. Wandersman Type: Workbooks & Guides Date: Jan 1, 2009 Be the first to review this resource! Download (2.86 MB) -
Evaluation for the Way We Work Michael Quinn Patton describes the developmental evaluation approach. Here is an excerpt from the article:
Author: Michael Quinn Patton Type: Newsletters & Periodicals Date: Mar 21, 2006 Be the first to review this resource! Download (886 KB) -
Evaluation to Support Strategic Learning: Principles and Practices Evaluation that supports strategic learning is an area that the Center for Evaluation Innovation is helping to develop and grow. Working with organizations and groups to integrate evaluative thinking into their strategic decision making and bring timely data to the table for reflection and use has tremendous potential as an approach to evaluation, particularly for complex and dynamic social change strategies.
Author: Julia Coffman & Tanya Beer Type: Research & Reports Date: Jun 1, 2011 Point K Pick Be the first to review this resource! Download (106.64 KB) -
From Insight to Action: New Directions in Foundation Evaluation This report highlights emerging approaches to evaluation in the field of philanthropy that increase the effectiveness of both foundations and their grantees. Author: FSG Social Impact Advisors Type: Research & Reports Date: Apr 1, 2007 Be the first to review this resource! Download (3.67 MB) -
From the War on Poverty to an Economy that Works for All This publication about the effort to reframe the "war on poverty" to "low wage work" offers an example of an advocacy campaign that monitored and evaluated its own activities. One of the lessons learned from the advocacy effort specifically is in regard to monitoring and evaluating: "Advocates and activists must be flexible and open-minded about evaluating the degree to which an approach is working or not working, if any change is to be made." Author: Shulman, Sarah Type: Research & Reports Date: Mar 1, 2006 Be the first to review this resource! Download (543.15 KB) -
Guidance Note #3: Introduction to Mixed Methods in Impact Evaluation Mixed methods (MM) evaluations seek to integrate social science disciplines with predominantly quantitative (QUANT) and predominantly qualitative (QUAL) approaches to theory, data collection, data analysis and interpretation. The purpose is to strengthen the reliability of data, validity of the findings and recommendations, and to broaden and deepen our understanding of the processes through which program outcomes and impacts are achieved, and how these are affected by the context within which the program is implemented.
Author: Michael Bamberger Type: Workbooks & Guides Date: Sep 5, 2012 Be the first to review this resource! Web Link -
How to Perform Evaluations and Evaluation Reports This Guide was prepared to assist evaluators faced with the task of preparing evaluation reports. A focus is brought to:
1) identifying what CIDA expects from evaluation reports,2) instilling a results–based approach to their preparation, and
3) enhancing the value–added of the final product.
Author: Canadian International Development Agency Type: Workbooks & Guides Date: Jan 1, 2002 Be the first to review this resource! Download (234.54 KB)