Do you want to be able to monitor how an activity you’ve developed – for example a fund-raising campaign – is doing; how successful it is; what benefits it has delivered, and how you can learn from it for the future?
This is how to do it.
This Section of the Toolkit takes you through the steps needed to design and implement evaluations. These evaluations can be done at different levels and scales. For example your organisation may have developed an Action Plan for the next five years, and you may want to design an evaluation that monitors progress on the Action Plan and assesses achievements at the end of the five year period. Your organisation may have secured funding from a donor to deliver a programme for disadvantaged young people, and this donor requires evidence that its money is being well spent. Or you may wish to focus specifically on how a particular fund-raising campaign is doing. In all of these cases you will need evaluation.
This Section shows you how to do it effectively. It shows:
- Why you need evaluation?
- When you need to do it?
- The guiding principles you should follow
- The actions you need to take
- Some useful evaluation tools to use
- Evaluation pitfalls and how to avoid them
- Key resources to help you.
Many organisations fear evaluation. They think it’s all about measuring success and about punishing them for failing to meet their targets. In this context, evaluation is often seen in a negative light. But when it is used to help organisations learn how to do things better, evaluation is a very powerful tool to support change and innovation. Embedding evaluation intelligence in an organisation will support double loop learning’ for staff, clients, stakeholders and the organisation as a whole
To help organisations learn, evaluation needs to be used not just as a retrospective tool to assess performance, for example at the end of a funding year. Rather, it needs to be embedded within organisational systems and processes to support a cycle of continuous improvement. Essentially, the role of evaluation in organisations is not to drive perfection but to understand what is relevant, what can be controlled and what can’t, what is good enough and above all what can be applied from learned experience to help the organisation change for the better.
evaluation helps organisations collect and present evidence to stakeholders about the effectiveness of their activities. This is particularly important in fund-raising because donors who provide financial support are unlikely to keep providing that support if they don’t see value for their money
evaluation collects and analyses information that can then be used to provide evidence of success. It helps organisations understand who has benefited from their activities, in what ways and under which circumstances.
valuation helps organisations keep track of how they are progressing in relation to their current strategies and plans. Through monitoring progress, organisations can identify problems and issues that need to be solved, and understand the actions needed to correct them.
evaluation is crucial to enable the organisation to become a ‘learning organisation’. It supports continuous review and reflection and helps organisations to adapt to changing circumstances. By providing evidence of what works, evaluation supports organisational sustainability.
