January 28, 1999 | Read Time: 4 minutes
The need for charities to evaluate and measure the effects that their services have on clients and communities has become an increasingly accepted principle in the non-profit world. Over the last five years, a movement that started as a whisper has built into a crescendo of action, winning the support of charities and foundations. Even those organizations that had strongly resisted the practice have begun to embrace it as the best way for charities to prove that they are effective — and to improve what they do.
The challenge now is to make sure that evaluation becomes a permanent part of charities’ operations. That can be done by moving quickly to institutionalize and continue existing evaluation efforts, by educating grant makers and grantees on the many ways to infuse evaluation processes and concepts into everyday work, by sharing useful techniques, and by communicating the results of evaluation efforts to critics and supporters.
A study that my organization, InnoNet, recently completed for the Aspen Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that most non-profit groups undertake program evaluation not because some grant makers may require it but because the charities themselves want to improve their efforts. Yet when the initial adrenaline wears off, it is important that those organizations have the skills, resources, and encouragement to stay the course for years to come.
Insuring that that occurs involves the difficult task of transforming the culture of a non-profit organization from one that reacts to situations to one that continually plans and changes as it goes along. It requires that grant makers and grantees dedicate the necessary time, energy, and money so that evaluation becomes commonplace and not a luxury.
The following is a blueprint of concrete actions that can be taken by grant makers and charities to nurture the continued growth, acceptance, and success of evaluation efforts.
Accept common reporting forms. The primary barrier to the spread of program evaluation is that grant makers often require that charities submit a separate and different report to each grant maker, even for the same program. An extremely positive step toward alleviating that burdensome requirement is the continuing trend among regional associations of grant makers to offer common evaluation-report forms to accompany common grant applications. Even in cities and towns that don’t have the common formats, foundations that support the same program could still collaborate on their reporting and evaluation requirements in order to ease the burden on the grantees and to encourage a more thoughtful evaluation process.
Develop credentials for evaluators. Right now, anyone with any educational or work background can call himself or herself an evaluator. The American Evaluation Association or a similar trade association or university center should take the lead and develop a credential for evaluators that insures that they are competent in evaluation design and implementation as well as in programmatic development.
Establish national resource centers. Charities evaluate their programs in many different ways. Some conduct self-assessments, while others hire outside consultants. Some evaluate their operations, while others measure their results. National resource centers financed by grant makers can reduce the amount of energy that non-profit groups, particularly small grassroots organizations, spend reinventing evaluation designs, processes, and data-collection techniques. In addition, resource centers can serve as repositories of success stories that can illustrate to the non-profit world the great power of evaluation in achieving charities’ missions.
Train future non-profit managers. Non-profit managers need to be schooled in the necessity of program evaluation, and in ways to carry it out. Too often, charities’ senior staff members and foundation officials are unfamiliar with and intimidated by the evaluation process. There needs to be a greater emphasis in management-studies and continuing-education programs to teach the fundamental principles of program evaluation in lay terms to future non-profit leaders.
Commit more resources. Don’t assume that this just means that foundations must ante up more grant money for evaluations. It is a two-way street. Grantees must insist on and budget for evaluations in their grant proposals, either as a line item or as part of overhead. They must also make evaluation a top priority for their organizations.
To be sure, program evaluation can often be a long and arduous process. No one size fits all groups. But time and again, the rewards far outweigh the costs. For its own future health, the philanthropic world must insure that evaluation does not end up on the scrap heap of management fads but rather becomes an integral way of doing business.
Allison Fine is executive director of InnoNet, a non-profit consulting company in Washington.
