What's Near Me?

Why evaluate our work?

Filed under: Planning, Policy & Networks 

This article by Chris Church, CDF, looks at monitoring and evaluation, why we should do it and how.


Whatever your group is doing it makes sense to know if youre doing it as well as you could be. That, in a nutshell, is why monitoring and evaluation are important. Its also important to do both to actually evaluate as well as just monitoring what youre doing.

Monitoring is basically setting out a series of measurable goals and taking measurements to see whether youve reached those goals. Evaluation is quite a bit more than that, but good monitoring systems are a key part of good evaluation.

Evaluation is still often only done at the end of a project and in a hurry, perhaps because a report has to go to the funders. By then its too late to change anything and it accordingly wont be much help. But evaluation is more than simply measuring what youve done and checking that youve done what you said you would do when you asked for the money.

If evaluation is built into your project right from the start, it can help you to:

  • Run the project better;
  • Learn more from it;
  • Spot little problems before they become big problems.


Evaluation is a learning process (people need to learn about what has worked and what has not) and is central to community empowerment: people need to see how they are making a difference. Developing a good evaluation process takes time and mindfulness, especially if we are to assess issues such as Involvement and Participation.

There will be a need for both Quantitative (how much have we done?) and Qualitative (how well did we do it?) assessment.

Evaluation can help your project be clear on:

  • Whats been done
  • Whats happened as a result
  • How far you met your objectives
  • What you and the community have learnt
  • What to do next and how to do things better


What do we evaluate?

Evaluation is most useful if you look at all parts of your project:

Inputs: the resources that go in to a project. These are material resources (money, the use of buildings, equipment etc.) but should include the human resources (peoples time, energy and motivation) and resources put in by support agencies. A simple measure here would be the number of volunteers involved in a project, and the hours of work that they put in.

Processes: the ways in which the Inputs are used. This covers how people work together, how they take decisions, how they get trained, and how they find things out. This is not something that people often measure, but if the process goes wrong you usually know pretty fast, since people stop helping or getting involved!

Outputs are the specific products of a project. These are the things that the organisation running the project delivers. But the outputs are often not the aims of the project: they are the means by which the aims can be achieved. The outputs could be anything from new publications to setting up a youth club, planting trees or training people. Such outputs are usually fairly easy to measure and are key parts of any monitoring process.

Outcomes are the effects that we hope the Outputs and the Processes will produce. They may not be in direct control of the organisation because they will also depend on the actions of others. These are the indirect results of the project. They may not be so directly measurable, but it is usually quite easy to develop some indicators to help this work.

If an output is, for instance, a youth club attended by thirty young people, the outcomes could include less youth crime, more co-operation between groups of young people, increased confidence, and perhaps more young people getting jobs. You have to be careful as to how far your outcomes are related just to your project.

Good evaluation is important not just to show whats been done, but also to look at what the group has learnt - and to show how group members feel about what has been done. Thats why its important to consider all these issues. Working out your Inputs etc can be a useful exercise. This example for a generic project can act as a starting point:

Inputs
Staff time and skills; Partner staff time and skills; Skills of local community reps and community; Support from funding partners; Political contexts; Work done by contractors; Work done by artists; Training delivered; Other community activity; Contacts.

Process
Community meetings to plan process; Awareness raising; Other consultation; Programme development; Design work with community; Training needs assessment; Training; Team-building; Networking; Negotiation; Physical project building; Celebration; Support for local people; Monitoring and Evaluation.

Outputs
Attendance at regular group meetings; Constituted group set up; Numbers of people actively involved; Facility provided; Qualifications and training for numbers of people; Partnership group set up; Number of volunteers developed; Number of people volunteering; Area of land improved.

Outcomes
Empowered community; People gaining new skills and confidence from project work; More secure environment; More useable environment; Increased awareness; Bigger ambitions; Spin-off projects; People more confident; Increased community pride; Closer partner relations; World saved!


Asking the right questions

One key to successful evaluation is simply to ask the right questions. To do this, it is important to be clear exactly why you are evaluating, and against what criteria. You can ask questions that will address a range of issues:

  • Has the project succeeded in meeting its aims?
  • Has the project succeeded in improving quality of life for local people?

(Both these questions are dealt with by the evaluation work above)

  • Has the project helped deliver the goals and objectives of local action plans or regeneration programmes?
  • Has the project helped improve quality of life at a regional or even national level?


You may also wish to consider how your project relates to national targets. One way to do this would be to look at the national headline indicators for quality of life which cover everything from poverty to transport and climate change. You could consider for each indicator whether your project has:

  • Made a clear impact on this issue (as it was intended to do)
  • Had an incidental impact on this issue
  • Had little or no impact
  • Had an adverse impact


This kind of exercise, if done informally, can help you identify how to develop the project further.

Evaluating Involvement, Consultation, and Participation

It can seem as if participation and involvement are some of the hardest things to evaluate, not least because every case is different. However some basic measures can easily be developed, which will give a picture of what has been happening. These might include:

  • Volunteer time sheets
  • %s of questionnaires returned in target areas
  • Number of people attending meetings
  • Number of residents coming into group
  • Number of events organised by community
  • Number of consultations being run by local people
  • Need to be aware of people active in more than one group
  • Number of local people in formal positions
  • Number of local people in informal decision-making
  • Quality and accessibility of information provided
  • Structure of group (% of local people with power)
  • Participation with respect to local demographic breakdown


More work on evaluation can be found in Achieving Better Community Development a guide available from the Community Development Foundation. See also their publication Learning, Evaluation and Planning. (Tel: 020 7226 5375; E-mail: admin@cdf.org.uk; Website: www.cdf.org.uk).

Chris can be contacted on cjchurch@geo2.poptel.org.uk.

Other resources include:

Prove it! Measuring the effect of neighbourhood renewal on local people by Groundwork / The New Economics Foundation / Barclays Plc, June 2000. (Click on this link to get to their website and download a word version)

A practical handbook available free from Groundwork (0121 236 7356) or NEF (020 7407 7447).

Tools for programme evaluation of the Community Toolbox provides practical and easy-to-print advice, worksheets and checklists. (http://ctb.ku.edu/tools/EN/)

Charity Evaluation Services offer some free technical support. (www.ces-vol.org)
See also PQASSO - a practical guide for small and medium user-centred organisations to ensure they deliver a quality service. Available for 25424365 (25424399 with CD-rom).