Category: Evaluation

We’ve all heard the story: an innovative program was successful but had to stop because major or seed funding was discontinued. However, research in the area of program sustainability has shown that there are concrete steps you can take to increase the longevity of your programs. Learn what factors can increase the sustainability odds of your… Read more »

During my time as an evaluation consultant, I have listened to many governmental and non-profit agencies criticize logic models for being overly simplistic and time consuming. While these critiques are warranted, I encourage such agencies to revisit the use of these program planning tools. The American Evaluation Association offers a pre-recorded webinar in which presenter… Read more »

Are you looking for strategies for success in securing grant money? In this 20-minute webinar, Nicole Bowman of Bowman Performance Consulting will briefly revisit the four phase framework for developing a comprehensive funding strategy and emphasize the second phase: Developing a Project & Grant Proposal Concept. This webinar is designed to give you concrete tools… Read more »

How do you know if your program or intervention is responsible for outcomes that are being observed? If it is apparent that the program is playing a role, how much of an influence is the intervention having on observed outcomes? These questions often challenge evaluators and are commonly referred to as the “attribution versus contribution”… Read more »

When developing an evaluation project, it can be useful to review examples of evaluations that have been conducted in the past. The Community Toolbox developed by the University of Kansas describes the steps taken to evaluate a number of community-based programs in the past. To access this useful resource, click here. As mentioned in a… Read more »

In the last decade, “evidence-based decision making” has been described as a best practice across multiple contexts and settings. The process of how to actually make evidence-based decisions is less clear. The CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention has developed an interactive web resource developed that supports practitioners in making evidence-informed decisions.The American Evaluation Association is… Read more »

Evaluation stakeholders are becoming less interested in reading lengthy, formal evaluation reports. InsightShare, a data visualization consulting firm, has proposed a new and engaging way to share evaluation results – Photostories. On a recent blog post by the American Evaluation Association, they describe photostories as a new format developed by InsightShare for sharing project case… Read more »

Are you interested in learning useful evaluation tips from experts around the world? The American Evaluation Association sponsors a blog that is dedicated to highlighting Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources, and Lessons Learned related to evaluation. The blog, called “AEA 365: Tip-a-Day on Evaluation” features a post a day from and for evaluators around the globe…. Read more »

The American Evaluation Association is hosting a webinar on the use of crowdsourcing in evaluation. As defined by the webinar presenter Tarek Azzam crowdsourcing is, “the process of using the power of the many individuals (i.e. the crowd) to accomplish specific tasks.” Azzam explains that the idea of crowdsourcing is not new, but due to… Read more »

When starting an evaluation project, there are so many different options (i.e. methods, strategies, processes) and approaches available that it can be difficult to decide which to use. To assist with this and the larger evaluation planning process, Better Evaluation has developed a Rainbow Framework and Planning Tool that asks the reader a series of… Read more »

Non-profit organizations have been coming up with a variety of ways to conduct evaluation work with less resources. Conducting evaluation work on a budget can mean different things, such as reducing the budget for an external evaluation or having no budget to contract externally but having access to advice for quality assurance. Whatever your budget,… Read more »