Your needs: Do you need to prove a concept? Show outcomes to raise money? Or just satisfy your curiosity?.The funding source: Some sources, particularly large foundations, will tell you what kind of evaluation they want to see.
The scope of the project: A tiny one-day event doesn’t warrant big-time evaluation.
The choice of how to evaluate a project or program is usually determined by: Choosing How to Evaluate Your ProjectĮvaluation can be a simple, do-it-yourself process, or a full-scale, professional study. And if your organization is not as successful as you’d hoped, it’s helpful to actually know where the problems lie, and how best to fix them. It’s a positive thing to have tangible proof that your organization is working well: such proof will make it much easier to raise money in the future. In fact, it’s probably a good thing to be held accountable for the good works you’ve envisioned, and for the money entrusted to you.
Most foundations care a great deal about whether their money was well spent, and they often require some form of evaluation to determine whether your approach worked, and how it could be improved. What Is Project Evaluation (and Why Should You Do It)?Ī couple of decades ago, funders handed out checks without worrying too much about whether the awardee really achieved the goals they’d set for themselves.