Browse organizational analysis Resources
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"Participatory Performance Story Reporting" Clear Horizon, an M&E company in Australia, describes its participatory approach, specifically as it relates to the method of performance story reporting (PPSR). The company defines performance story reports as "essentially a short report about how a program contributed to outcomes." This page on their website includes links to other pages that describe the structure, process, and limitations of this the PPSR method. Author: Clear Horizon Type: Websites & Online Tools Date: Dec 31, 2008 Be the first to review this resource! Download (161.39 KB) -
"Real-life Lessons Learned and Resources in Building Capacity for Advocacy and Policy Evaluation among KIDS COUNT Grantees" The Annie E. Casey Foundation and Organizational Research Services, Inc. recount ten lessons learned from an evaluation of five KIDS COUNT grantees that began in 2007. The evaluation was designed to test some of the ideas presented in "A Guide to Measuring Advocacy and Policy", a report produced by AECF and ORS in 2006. This handout, distributed at the American Evaluation Association 2008 conference, also contains a list of advocacy evaluation resources available on ORS's website. Author: Annie E. Casey Foundation; Organizational Research Services Type: Tipsheets & Paper Tools Date: Nov 6, 2008 Be the first to review this resource! Download (261.49 KB) -
A Menu of Assessment Activities This brief menu of questions provides a simple, straightforward overview of evaluation activities. Author: Brett A. Magill Type: Tipsheets & Paper Tools Date: Feb 24, 2010
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A Practical Guide for Engaging Stakeholders in Developing Evaluation Questions This guide describes a five-step process for engaging stakeholders in developing evaluation
questions, and includes four worksheets and a case example to further facilitate the planning
and implementation of your stakeholder engagement process.Step 1: Prepare for stakeholder engagement: This step includes collecting information about
the program or initiative being evaluated—its history, why it came into being, what it is trying
to accomplish and what success would look like.Author: Hallie Preskill and Nathalie Jones Type: Workbooks & Guides Date: Jun 1, 2009 Be the first to review this resource! Download (1001.41 KB) -
Advocacy Evaluation Update #10 In this issue:
ADVOCACY EVALUATION AND RIGOR - How to be Methodically Rigorous in the Field of Advocacy Evaluation By Lily Zandniapour and Kathy Brennan
PROFILES FROM THE FIELD - Dr. Paul Zeitz, The Global AIDS Alliance By Laura Ostenso
SPOTLIGHT A User’s Prospective on an Advocacy Evaluation Planning Tool from the Children’s Aid Society - By Moria Cappio and Melanie Reyes
EDITOR’S PICKS News, Events, and Resources
Author: Julia Coffman (ed.) Type: Newsletters & Periodicals Date: Oct 1, 2010 Be the first to review this resource! Download (425.54 KB) -
Advocacy Evaluation Update #9 In This Issue:
1. Feature: Framework of Factors that Affect Political Support
Why do some issues receive priority attention from political leaders while others receive very little? Political scientist Jeremy Shiffman has developed a framework that offers a response to this question.
2. Spotlight: Evaluating Community Organizing
Catherine Crystal Foster and Justin Louie identify what to consider when evaluating community organizing efforts. They also offer example benchmarks and methods for capturing organizing outcomes.
Author: Julia Coffman (ed.) Type: Newsletters & Periodicals Date: May 1, 2010 Be the first to review this resource! Download (329.6 KB) -
An Evaluation Approach for an Environmental Think Tank and Advocacy Organization Johanna Morariu described how Innovation Network worked with the Post Carbon Institute to develop an organizational evaluation framework. We developed and fine tuned several assessment areas for think tank evaluation and advocacy evaluation with interview data collected from key informants. Then, in consultation with key staff from the Post Carbon Institute, we created an organizational theory of change. The theory contains information about the organization’s mission; audiences; strategies; focusing events, crises, and windows of opportunity; desired shifts, and impact. Author: Johanna Morariu Type: Opinion (blog, editorial) Date: Apr 19, 2011 Be the first to review this resource! Web Link -
Ask the expert: What is strategic learning and how do you develop an organizational culture that encourages it? In article from The Evaluation Exchange, John A. Healy, Director of Strategic Learning and Evaluation at The Atlantic Philanthropies, shares ways to position learning as an organizational priority. Author: Julia Coffman, HFRP; Erin Harris, HFRP Type: Newsletters & Periodicals Date: Jun 1, 2005 Point K Pick Be the first to review this resource! Web Link -
Assessing Capacity for Community Change Efforts: Learnings From an Adaptive Initiative (Presentation slides) Should community change efforts be focused on funding coalitions or funding a flexible group of community leaders? The Kansas Health Foundation has embraced a four-pronged community change model that targets community leaders as key agents of change within each of their funded communities. Author: Kat Athanasiades, Veena Pankaj, Deanna Van Hersh Type: Presentation Slides Date: Oct 17, 2013 Point K Pick Be the first to review this resource! Download (682.32 KB) -
Assessing Capacity for Community Change Efforts: Learnings From an Adaptive Initiative [Slides] Should community change efforts be focused on funding coalitions or funding a flexible group of community leaders? The Kansas Health Foundation has embraced a four-pronged community change model that targets community leaders as key agents of change within each of their funded communities. Innovation Network, the evaluation partner for the Kansas Health Foundation's Healthy Communities Initiative, developed and deployed an assessment tool designed to contribute to the assessment of leadership capacity in effecting community change. Author: Kat Athanasiades, Veena Pankaj, and Deanna Van Hersh Type: Presentation Slides Date: Oct 17, 2013 Be the first to review this resource! Web Link -
Assessing to Achieve High Performance: What Nonprofits Are Doing and How Foundations Can Help The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) wanted to understand the state of performance assessment practice among nonprofits to help foundations target support where it is most needed. Author: The Center for Effective Philanthropy Type: Research & Reports Date: Apr 1, 2015 Be the first to review this resource! Download (1.49 MB) -
Blog: "Monitoring and Evaluation NEWS" Monitoring and Evaluation NEWS is a frequently-updated blog / news website managed by Rick Davies in the UK. The site focuses on M&E methods for aid / development programs, and includes news, opinion, jobs, and events.
Author: Davies, Rick Type: Websites & Online Tools Date: Jan 1, 1997 Point K Pick Be the first to review this resource! Web Link -
Building a Culture of Evaluation: 30 Ideas to Apply to Your Organization This fun infographic by Community Solutions shows 30 ways to build a culture of evaluation into your organization. Examples include starting with simple evaluations to demonstrate benefits and worth, positioning evaluation as a way of giving staff a voice, and scheduling time up front in the program planning phase to discuss evaluation.
Author: Community Solutions Type: Tipsheets & Paper Tools Date: Jan 1, 2011 Be the first to review this resource! Download (148.96 KB) -
Building Capacity to Measure and Manage Performance This article explores what it takes to build the capacity for measuring and managing performance. It is written for nonprofits
Author: Matthew Forti & Kathleen Yazbak Type: Workbooks & Guides Date: Apr 14, 2012 Be the first to review this resource! Download (188.43 KB) -
Can we obtain the required rigour without randomisation? Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating in the international development sector need credible, reliable feedback on whether their interventions are making a meaningful difference but they struggle with how they can practically access it. Impact evaluation is research and, like all credible research, it takes time, resources, and expertise to do well, and – despite being under increasing pressure – most NGOs are not set up to rigorously evaluate the bulk of their work.
Author: Karl Hughes and Claire Hutchings Type: Research & Reports Date: Aug 1, 2011 Be the first to review this resource! Download (347.42 KB) -
Capacity and Organizational Readiness for Evaluation (CORE) Tool Capacity and Organizational Readiness for Evaluation (CORE) Tool is a succinct, fifteen-question organizational assessment tool. The CORE Tool assesses organizational readiness for evaluation and learning on three dimensions: Culture/Learning Environment; Organizational Leadership; and Resources, Systems, Structures, and Process. Author: Johanna Morariu, Ehren Reed, and Kathy Brennan Type: Tipsheets & Paper Tools Date: Mar 8, 2011 Point K Pick Be the first to review this resource! Download (115.62 KB) -
Catholic Relief Services' (CRS) Guidance for Developing Logical and Results Frameworks This document summarizes Catholic Relief Services’ (CRS) guidance for developing logical and results frameworks.
• logical framework “is a systematic and visual way to present and share your understanding of the relationships among the resources you have to operate your program, the activities you plan, and the changes or results you hope to achieve.”CRS’ proframe and the U.K. Department for International Development’s (DFID’s) logframe are examples of logical frameworks.
Author: Carlisle J. Levine Type: Workbooks & Guides Date: Jan 31, 2007 Be the first to review this resource! Download (196.44 KB) -
Dabbling in the Data: A Hands-On Guide to Participatory Data Analysis Many quality improvement trainings either ignore data interpretations or offer limited guidance about how to dig into the data. This means that whoever speaks up first sets the agenda for the group—hardly a rigorous or fruitful process. Educators and children and youth professionals are increasingly interested in utilizing data to support continuous quality improvement, but few resources are available to help practitioners know what to do.Author: Public Profit Type: Research & Reports Date: Jan 1, 2014 Be the first to review this resource! Download (1.3 MB) -
Dataviz! Or, How to Win at Communication and Influence People (Resources Handout) Are you intrigued by data and information visualization—dataviz—and how it could improve your communication strategy? Are you interested in the range of dataviz options, but unsure which is right for you? Or are you maybe even drowning in data and looking for someone to throw you a life-saving suggestion for tools to transform your data into a message?
Author: Johanna Morariu Type: Tipsheets & Paper Tools Date: May 17, 2013 Point K Pick Be the first to review this resource! Download (510.3 KB) -
Evaluating Foundation-Supported Capacity Building: Lessons Learned This study of lessons learned from evaluations of philanthropic capacitybuilding programs used a national database of 473 programs, and a survey and interviews with 87 funders (82 foundations or foundation collaboratives, and five foundation-supported intermediaries) to answer two questions:
(1) How do foundations that support nonprofit capacity building evaluate their grantmaking and direct service activities?
(2) What lessons can be learned from valuation, both to improve these programs and justify the investments made in them?
Author: Thomas E. Backer, Jane Ellen Bleeg & Kathryn Groves Type: Research & Reports Date: Jan 1, 2010 Be the first to review this resource! Download (152.27 KB) -
Evaluating Social Innovation In this paper, the authors explore ways that common evaluation approaches and practices constrain innovation and offer lessons about an emerging evaluation approach—developmental evaluation—which supports the adaptation that is so crucial to innovation. For what kinds of grantmaking strategies should funders consider using developmental evaluation? What organizational conditions are necessary for it to work? How can grantmakers grapple with the challenging questions that developmental evaluation raises about innovation, accountability, rigor, and adaptation? Author: Hallie Preskill and Tanya Beer Type: Research & Reports Date: Aug 1, 2012 Point K Pick Be the first to review this resource! Download (341.7 KB) -
Evaluating Social Justice Advocacy: A Values Based Approach Although social justice is a concept inherent in many advocacy efforts, it often remains unspoken or is
ignored during the evaluation process. In some ways, the use of a social justice lens when evaluating
advocacy should be self-evident. If advocacy efforts aim for social justice outcomes, evaluations should look
for evidence that such outcomes have been achieved. But understanding just what social justice means can
be a challenge, as can knowing how to look for it in the context of complex and often long-term advocacy efforts.Author: Barbara Klugman Type: Research & Reports Date: Aug 1, 2010 Point K Pick Be the first to review this resource! Download (334.73 KB) -
Evaluation Concepts Mindmap The Evaluation Concepts Mindmap is a visual showing different considerations in evaluation, such as assessment types, evaluation cycle, and data collection, and the components of those considerations. This is a useful tool for evaluation planning, as well as for gaining a broad perspective of what is important in the field of evaluation—all on one page. Author: Johanna Morariu, Innovation Network Type: Tipsheets & Paper Tools Date: Mar 28, 2013 Point K Pick
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Evaluation Principles and Practices: An Internal Working Paper The purpose of this document is to advance the Foundation’s existing work so that our evaluation practices become more consistent across the organization. We hope to create more common understanding of our philosophy, purpose, and expectations regarding evaluation as well as clarify staff roles and available support. With more consistency and shared understanding, we expect less wheel re-creation across program areas, greater learning from each other’s efforts, and faster progress in designing meaningful evaluations and applying the results.
Author: Fay Twersky & Karen Lindblom Type: Research & Reports Date: Jan 22, 2013 Be the first to review this resource! Download (1.42 MB) -
Evaluation Resource Guide This listing and description of resources has been developed to help Department staff evaluate and monitor the performance of Department programs. It also is intended to be useful for county staff and other service providers. Resources in the Guide range from evaluation manuals providing basic information to books with detailed information on specific topics such as logic models, data analysis or sampling. Also included are resources on identifying effective programs/best practices, evaluation standards, and contracting for evaluation.
Author: Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) Type: Workbooks & Guides Date: May 1, 2010 Be the first to review this resource! Download (223.14 KB)