Evaluation Capacity Building

From the years I've spent as a grantwriter, with the addition of my masters degree which required me to learn a variety of research methods in order to write my thesis, I've developed a strong interest in evaluation. Pretty much every major funder requires prospective fundees to lay out their plans for evaluating their programs before they will consider putting any money down. Which makes sense, everyone wants to know that their money will be put to good use, right?

But there's a problem, which is that a lot of nonprofits don't really know how to effectively evaluate their programs, at least not in the depth that funders would like. We know how to count how many people we serve. We know how to gather testimonials from happy clients whose lives have changed. We know how to promise that we'll provide training to a certain number of people, or a certain number of hot meals, or hours of child care, or whatever. But does that really tell anyone how well our programs are working? How do we know that those happy clients wouldn't have changed their lives without our help? How can we tell that those training sessions or hot meals or hours of child care really lead to a greater good, like better education, permanently improved health, reduced youth violence, or whatever other parts of our missions the activities are meant to further?

It seems impossible to tell. And even if there is a way to measure these things, how are we supposed to know how to do it? We're not all trained in research methods, and besides, we're busy providing those training sessions, services, meals, child care, etc. etc.

It's frustrating to be asked to answer such difficult questions without necessarily having the skills or experience to do so. And I think that often, those of us writing the grant proposals don't spend much time or thought on the Evaluation sections, because we don't know what funders are even really looking for there even if we do know how to provide it. That must be frustrating for the funders as well. It doesn't do any of us any good to be frustrated about it, and I suspect it makes us frustrated at each other, which prevents us from working together in the ways that might help our communities more--not to mention make our own lives and jobs easier! So I'm quite pleased to be reading about Evaluation Capacity Building.

This posting on The Innovation Network website goes into more depth about the topic, which they define as, "the intentional work to continuously create and sustain organizational processes that make quality evaluation and its uses routine.”

The posting summarizes a Think Tank meeting on Evaluation Capacity Building which included representatives from several of the major funders who are most concerned with encouraging useful evaluation by nonprofits of their programs.

I think that we should all be considering ways in which we can build effective evaluation into our program plans, not only when we're writing proposals to draw in funds, but all the time. Just as funders are concerned with how well their money is being spent, we as nonprofit professionals should be--and really are--concerned with how much of a difference we are making and how we could do even better. I hope that activities such as the ECB Think Tank are a sign that funders and nonprofits are looking for ways to help each other use evaluation to accomplish even greater societal change.