EVALUATION

EVALUATION

"How did that recipe work?

 What would make it better?

 What did the people who cooked ate or paid for the meal think?

What will I do differently next time?"

We evaluate all the time- it‘s an everyday part of life; we do it all the time!

In the voluntary sector people work hard, have little money, are very committed, and care a lot...some how it must be good...BUT at end of the day what difference does the work make?

·         How do we know what is being achieved- the results, if any, of the work? Are they meeting people‘s needs- which people? It is not enough to say ":We are doing a good job".

·         What do users/members/clients/beneficiaries think about how they do our work?

·         What do the funders think- is their money well spent?

·         What are they trying to achieve- and how will they know we they are succeeding? Are they effective?

·         What needs to change and how?

The answers to these questions are discovered through evaluation.

Evaluation is assessing and judging the value of a piece of work, an organisation or a service. Its main purpose is to help an organisation reflect on what it is trying to achieve, assessing how far it is succeeding, and identify required changes.

Evaluation asks and answers questions like

·         Does all that hard work and money make any difference?

·         Who for and in what way?

·         How well is the organisation meeting the needs of users and potential beneficiaries?

·         Does it work properly? Is it effective? Whose views count?

·         How can we assess the quality of the work and make improvements?

·         Is this the best use of money and worker time?

It is not difficult for us to develop criteria for our judgements, or find a choice of indicators both hard and soft; but our judgements also involve our values.

We have different ways of valuing features eg access/ comfort/ type of educational experience we have had; different valuing from different cultures:

·         evaluation involves differing values and judgements

·         evaluation is comparative by nature
- past with present ( baseline data or starting point or recall of where things were in comparison with now) &
- comparing examples of similar projects or programmes

Without the final stage the evaluation is useless.

In 'Utilisation focussed evaluation' by M.Q. Patton. 1997 Sage there is a useful formal definition of program evaluation:

Program evaluation:

the systematic collection of information about the activities, characteristics, and outcomes of programs to make judgements about the program, improve program effectiveness, and/or inform decisions about future programming. Utilization-focused program evaluation (as opposed to program evaluation in general) is evaluation done for and with specific, intended primary users for specific, intended uses.

Evaluation can take place at any time in an organisation‘s work-

·         before or at the beginning to establish the needs

·         at regular intervals

·         at the end of the work or project

·         OR ideally built inside the Community or Voluntary Organisation and its planning and work