For small and medium sized NGOs this can seem like a tricky question: you know you need some sort of help with monitoring and evaluation but are not sure what sort exactly. So here are the 4 things you need to think about to make sure that you’re buying, and Read more…
It is easy to think that an evaluation is an all-or-nothing kind of service, that you’re buying in expensive skills and expertise and that it is going to take three to six months of detailed data collection and analysis. Well, yes, evaluation can be that and even more. And sometimes Read more…
The last thing that any of us want is a dull evaluation report that sits on a shelf gathering dust. What a complete waste of time and resources that is! To ensure that doesn’t happen make sure that you build in this one thing into your terms of reference: actionable Read more…
When I started out in the nonprofit sector evaluators and consultants were aloof, external beings that descended to inform us of how well we were or were not doing; wrote dense impenetrable prose and made pronouncements that could close a project down. Fortunately much has changed! I do still believe Read more…
Well the snacks are the most important element, they keep your energy levels up! When I mention that to groups of stakeholders that have gathered to work on developing a hypothesis for a programme or intervention, they realise that they are not getting off lightly. There is lots of debate Read more…
This article first appeared in the edition of ‘Evaluator’ – the journal of the UK Evaluation Society in May 2019 When I was asked to write on capacity building for tendering and commissioning I thought briefly about making some high-brow comment on the ‘evaluation market place’, or how evaluators and Read more…
We talk a lot about positive impact: the positive impact that a programme or project is having, a positive impact delivered into someone’s life, etc. But we all know that things don’t always go swimmingly. Sometimes, in fact, our interventions don’t have the anticipated results. Sometimes people are actually worse Read more…
This blog is written with the evaluation commissioner (clients) in mind at the stage where they have to assess whether a proposed design is going to be successful, but the advice is relevant for those designing evaluations and those designing terms of reference for evaluations too! It might seem like Read more…
So, you’ve put in place your programme of interventions, you’ve collected data and analysed that data to tell you how well the intervention has gone and you’ve even had an evaluation done (by some lucky person like me) that has highlighted in a report format the impact that your programme Read more…
Picture it: you’re a small charity with limited staff, financial resources and no experience in fancy flowcharts, surveys and log frames. But you know you need to do something to demonstrate your impact. Your supporters are asking questions, your donors want to know what difference you’re making. Even the regulator Read more…