Grant Guru

Evaluation plans tell you and your funder how you will know that your program is working and if not, why not. Good evaluation plans are tightly integrated into the proposal and links the evaluation to your project goals and objectives. When responding to an RFP, the evaluation plan usually is one of the last parts of your narrative.

As you plan your program, you need to ask yourself what do you want to learn? What information will you need to measure your effectiveness? What purpose will the evaluation serve? Who is the audience for the evaluation information? From what sources should you collect the information? In what format will you collect your data? What resources will you need to collect the data?

I was really surprised to find that there are over five million hits on Google for "designing an evaluation plan." I didn't realize this was a hot topic. Is it due to this age of educational accountability?

Just as with goals, objectives, and activities, the evaluation section of your proposal should continue to follow the same parallel structure that you have already started. For each major objective you should be able to measure the effectives of your activities/implementation. I like to keep the numbering of the evaluation in alignment with the rest of my proposal. For example, my objective 1a, will have an integrated activity 2a with an evaluation statement 3a. As always, refer to the RFP and follow the numbering and heading scheme provided in the grant directions.

When you develop your need statements, you usually have reasons why you have identified this as a need. Likewise, as you begin to think about the activities that kids and teachers will do, you plan how you will measure and report your project success. Your outcomes do not always provide you with positive results and so you need to build benchmarks into your proposal to keep your activities on track. Doing what you said you would do is why you were funded. Even if your outcomes do not meet your expectations, this result may be important to those that try to adopt or adapt your program methodology into the future.

Evaluation experts have their own language that the beginner grantwriter may find overwhelming. You don't need to be an expert in evaluation but it helps to understand the language. Let's take a look at some of this terminology. Evaluators use the term assessment to mean a measurement tool. If the measurement occurs over a specified time, it is known as a longitudinal study. Evaluators speak of qualitative and quantitative data. The main difference is that qualitative data usually involves the collecting of opinion surveys and anecdotal stories from participants. Quantitative data relies on numbers. Qualitative collects "soft" data while quantitative collects "hard" data. As you carry out your evaluation process, you operationalize your project to meet measurable outcomes. Your level of success is often measured by indicators. As you measure changes due to the result of your program, you are using benchmarks to match points in time. As your project progresses, you use the collected data and indicators to provide continuous improvement.