Nonprofits with a strategy and plan for evaluation gain new insights about their work, have stories to share with funders and other stakeholders, and generate ideas to strengthen their programs. Without an evaluation strategy and plan, nonprofits may waste valuable time and resources on surveys and other data-gathering methods that don’t provide helpful insights.
In this three-part virtual training, you’ll go beyond basic evaluation concepts to learning how to craft strategic, informed decisions about evaluation for your program or organization.
This training will be highly interactive – combining presentations, conversations, and individual reflection and work. By the end, you will have the tools and training to craft a complete evaluation plan for a program, small organization or department of your choosing.
Learning Objectives
- Align evaluation strategically with mission, values and operations of organization
- Plan for evaluation activities
- Overcome common challenges, including low survey response rates and poor data quality.
Learners will experience engaging interaction with the training team throughout the training and will have access to their expertise during and between sessions. There will be assignments during sessions and suggested work between sessions so that by the end of the third session you will have a complete or nearly-complete evaluation plan for a program, small organization, or department of your choosing.
Please note: Participants will be most successful if they have: (1) a program in mind that they would like to create an evaluation plan for; and (2) existing knowledge of evaluation and basic methods for evaluating programs and organizations (surveys, focus groups, etc.).
In addition to reserving time to attend the two hours of live training each week, you will also need time to work on developing your evaluation strategy and plan; this may be an additional 2 or more hours each week.
FAQS
What if I have a conflict with one of the three parts? Each session builds upon the previous session. Therefore, if you have a conflict with one or more of the parts, we recommend not registering for this training.
Will the session be recorded? As a general policy, we cannot guarantee any of our workshops will have a recording available even if there is a plan to record the event. Factors such as the content and structure of a workshop, as well as unexpected technical problems affect our ability to record an event and/or provide a recording to registrants.
Can registrations be shared? Each participant needs to have their own connection to the virtual classroom, which means registrations can't be shared. Participants will be actively engaging with the trainer via chat and polls, and thus each needs to have their own keyboard, computer, and connection to the training.
Speaker Information
This session will be led by The Improve Group’s experts in evaluation capacity building and guided by Leah Goldstein Moses, founder and CEO. The Improve Group is a St. Paul-based, international consulting firm focused on research, evaluation, and strategic planning. The Improve Group team has worked with hundreds of nonprofits, including building the capacity for evaluation with many of these clients. For nearly 20 years they have been helping nonprofits measure and demonstrate impact, which in turn leads to improved services, innovation and increased ability to build support.