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Evaluation
The Great Evaluation Debate
Perspectives for Assessing Performance
"Evaluation" is an increasingly used buzzword to
describe how we know if we are doing a good job. As a
nonprofit with a lofty mission, it is difficult to
quantify incremental success. It is this challenge that
inspires debate within the field: how to you measure
success?
Methods of evaluating program goals can differ from
methods of evaluating communications strategy, however
those activities should work in tandem to achieve the
organization's overall goals. Just as nonprofits have
specific missions and objectives, so too should your
communications plan and evaluation system.
There are three basic types of evaluation:
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Formative
evaluation – Asks if you are using the right
strategies. And if not, can you shift them in the
course of executing a program so that you’re on
course to achieve desired outcomes?
-
Process evaluation
– Investigates immediate outcomes, such as knowledge
change, increased awareness, and even behavior
change.
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Impact evaluation
– Produces evidence of systemic change, such as
policy change and systems change, reduced disease
prevalence, etc.
Consider, for example,
the environmental movement. If you are the leader of
an environmental group and you start a campaign to
teach children about recycling, how do you measure
your impact? If you do a "formative evaluation," you
would begin measuring at the early stages of the
campaign, perhaps through an initial focus group of
students prior to launching the final version. If
you followed as "process evaluation" model, you
might measure your impact by the results of a school
recycling drive or conduct a survey of elementary
school students over the course of the campaign. If
you chose to measure results through an "impact
evaluation," you would focus more on the board, long
term impact of the campaign after its completion,
such as changes in the rate of recycling over 10
years, or a survey of adults who learned about
recycling as children to determine whether the
message of "reduce, reuse, recycle" has compelled
them to make a permanent behavior change.
The various models of assessment provide you with
valuable information about the impact of your
communications program, and your choice depends on
your objectives and the type of communications
activities you choose to run. The key take-away
lesson here is that there is no single right or
wrong way to evaluate communications, and you
can employ multiple measures as needed in order to
provide you with an accurate picture of your impact.
Key Questions
As you develop your strategic communications plan,
try to think ahead to how you will measure your
success and ask:
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What are my overall
objectives?
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When are my internal
deadlines?
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What are my internal
benchmarks?
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What do I hope to
learn from this evaluation?
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How can I improve and
course correct as I go?
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Are my colleagues
satisfied with our progress?
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Are my constituents
being served?
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Are my outputs in line
with my overall mission?
These questions and
others will guide you as you measure your
communications program before, during, and after its
implementation. Good luck!
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