As Stephanie Evergreen wrote, “This year, the American Evaluation Association is loaded with a ton of great stuff… I’m also really excited to see the closing session on Saturday, because AEA President Rodney Hopson is pulling together something amazing. The theme of the conference this year is Evaluation in Complex Ecologies: Relationships, Responsibilities, Relevance. What in [...]
Emery Evaluation: Defining Complex Ecologies: 1 Photo, 25 Words
October 12, 2012 By
Emery Evaluation: Getting the Resources You Need for Evaluation [Guest post by Patrick Germain]
October 9, 2012 By
Hi evaluators! My name is Patrick Germain and I am the Director of Program Evaluation and Quality Assurance at Project Renewal, and the Founder and Director of Performance Management Professionals, a community of practice based in New York City on issues of Performance Measurement and Management and Evaluation. Organizations are rife with politics, and politics is often the [...]
Emery Evaluation: Preempting Conflict in Evaluation [Guest post by Patrick Germain]
October 2, 2012 By
Hi evaluators! My name is Patrick Germain and I am the Director of Program Evaluation and Quality Assurance at Project Renewal, and the Founder and Director of Performance Management Professionals, a community of practice based in New York City on issues of Performance Measurement and Management and Evaluation. Organizations are rife with politics, and politics is often the [...]
Emery Evaluation: Managing Your Evaluation Reputation [Guest post by Patrick Germain]
September 25, 2012 By
Hi evaluators! My name is Patrick Germain and I am the Director of Program Evaluation and Quality Assurance at Project Renewal, and the Founder and Director of Performance Management Professionals, a community of practice based in New York City on issues of Performance Measurement and Management and Evaluation. Organizations are rife with politics, and politics [...]
Adventures of a Nonprofit and Foundations Evaluator: How can findings influence decision-making? [Guest post by Jonathan O'Reilly]
August 21, 2012 By
After spending the past couple years as an internal evaluator, I decided to start addressing other internal evaluators’ questions, comments, and concerns. I’ll be sharing their questions on my blog, connecting them to other evaluators, and offering advice from my own experiences with internal evaluation. Here’s a question from Jonathan O’Reilly, my friend from the [...]
Adventures of a Nonprofit and Foundations Evaluator: Need advice about internal evaluation?
August 16, 2012 By
Internal evaluators are a spectacular breed. We adapt evaluation methods for our community-based nonprofits, universities, K-12 school systems, and government agencies. We adapt our evaluation styles so that we blend into the culture of our organization. We’re often the sole evaluator in our organizations, so we master everything from statistics to logic models, public speaking, focus [...]
Adventures of a Nonprofit and Foundations Evaluator: My evaluation “pre-test” for non-evaluators
May 12, 2012 By
I love helping non-evaluators use results to improve programs. Click here to read what I’m aiming for in this quest for evaluation use. Sometimes program staff already know a lot about evaluation. Often, I’m teaching them about evaluation for the first time. So where do I begin? How do I know “where” they’re at in [...]
Adventures of a Nonprofit and Foundations Evaluator: What are the trends in nonprofit evaluation over the past two years?
May 11, 2012 By
I’ve been thinking about patterns in nonprofit program evaluation and performance management. Here’s what I’ve noticed: Funders are getting excited about data and evaluation! This means… Funders encourage/require nonprofits to demonstrate the immediate effects of their work (i.e. detailed output data and short-term outcomes included in monthly and quarterly reports) Funders encourage/require nonprofits to demonstrate [...]