October 4, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Information Gold Mine: Innovative Uses of Evaluation
by Paul W. Mattessich, Shelly Hendricks, and Ross VeLure Roholt
Many small, local nonprofit groups have never taken steps to evaluate their programs, write the authors of this volume, adding that such groups “often overlook opportunities to use evaluation research findings to educate the public and policy makers, to educate potential consumers of our services, to market an organization, to motivate staff, and to accomplish other significant tasks.”
Paul W. Mattessich, executive director of Wilder Research at the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation; Shelly Hendricks, research associate at Wilder Research; and Ross VeLure Roholt, action research officer at Public Achievement Northern Ireland, interviewed officials at 40 charities to compile information for this book.
Though the authors discuss the many ways in which charities can use program-evaluation information, the book’s primary focus is on improving program and service quality and effectiveness.
They describe five different nonprofit groups that used evaluation results to better serve their clientele, including an organization that serves abused women and men and another that serves people facing mental-health crises.
Chapters define what program evaluation entails, describe how charities have used evaluation findings, and suggest how to extract the best information from these reports.
“Evaluation can tell us the extent to which our program meets the needs of all the people we serve, and it can indicate whether we meet more needs of certain groups,” the authors write.
Publisher: Fieldstone Alliance, 60 Plato Boulevard East, Suite 150, St. Paul, Minn. 55107; (800) 274-6024 or (651) 556-4500; fax (651) 556-4517; books@fieldstonealliance.org; http://www.fieldstonealliance.org; 111 pages; $17.95; ISBN 0-940069-51-2.
