Category: Evaluation

Managing an evaluation involves agreeing on how decisions will be made for each aspect of the evaluation and ensuring they are implemented well. Better Evaluation offers 8 Simple Tasks to follow when managing an evaluation: 1. Understand and Engage Stakeholders 2. Establish Decision Making Processes 3. Decide Who Will Conduct the Evaluation 4. Determine and Secure… Read more »

Are you sick of boring, old PowerPoint presentations? Well don’t give up just yet. Susan Kistler shares 25 Low-cost/no-cost Tech Tools for Data Visualization and Reporting in her most recent blog post on the American Evaluation Association Website. Susan explores a range of online mediums that will help keep your audience actively engaged during your next… Read more »

Looking for a more compelling way to demonstrate the value of the work your organization is doing? Demonstrating Value (DV), a Vancity Community Foundation Initiative, offers simple management solutions that enable you to use information and data more effectively to run your organization, plan for the future and show your value to the community. DV combines business… Read more »

Have you ever wondered what impact BC’s community-based HIV and HCV organizations are making? PAN and the BC HIV/HCV Evaluation Advisory Group decided to work towards answering this question by developing the Community HIV/HCV Evaluation and Reporting Tool (the CHERT). The CHERT is an online survey tool that aims to collect annual data from community-based HIV/HCV… Read more »

Is your organization interested in understanding how your programs and services are operating? This 9-part Nonprofit Organizational Assessment Tool can help guide a group discussion about your organization’s operations. This group discussion ideally should include board members, staff, volunteers, and service recipients, but could be used as a self-assessment tool by anyone associated with a… Read more »

In this webcast from the The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University’s Evaluation Café series, Lori Wingate engages participants in a discussion of some common misunderstandings when it comes to program evaluation language and practice. The session explores some widely repeated evaluation mistakes and missteps, considers the causes and consequences of these problems, and generates ideas about… Read more »

The Dr. Peter Centre (DPC) is a not-for-profit health care facility based in Vancouver that provides an integrated model of HIV/AIDS health care and support services to mitigate the risks faced by marginalized persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Patrick McDougall, Communications & Evaluation Officer at the DPC, shared a glimpse into the evaluation work conducted by this organization. Driven by… Read more »

All too often, data is collected, regressions are run, and the analysis is printed out only to be shelved in the corner to collect dust. Data, big or small, is meaningless without a way to organize and present important findings within it. That’s where data visualization comes in. People comprehend data better through pictures than… Read more »

Selecting an appropriate evaluator can make or break the quality, value and usefulness of evaluation projects. Therefore it is critical to reflect on how to best select one of these individuals, regardless of whether the evaluator is internal to your organization or an external professional that you will hire. The University of Michigan offers a helpful resource… Read more »

Janet Madsen, Communications Coordinator at Positive Women’s Network (PWN), shares some words about her organization’s evaluation activities: “PWN appreciates the benefits evaluation can provide our organization. Internally, PWN is constantly gathering feedback from our members to learn how to serve them better. Over the last couple of months, we’ve also contracted external evaluators to better… Read more »