Evaluation

Evaluations are often seen as something that happens at the end of a piece of work to tie things up and report to funders. They can make people nervous, even defensive if they fear that their work will be judged harshly. But evaluations at their best:

Are forward looking and developmental: whenever possible we meet at the start of a project, to help you clarify what you are aiming to achieve and set up systems to use within your work which will capture the information you need. We help you to review progress so that the learning feeds in to the projects as it unfolds

Inspire openness and curiosity: We work with staff teams to overcome any resistance or anxiety and inspire curiosity about what they could learn through the evaluation. Where problems exist we have found that facing the difficulty without judgement or criticism allows people to understand what went wrong and find new ways forward

Celebrate achievements and capture learning:  Identifying what has worked and how it worked is at least as important as pin-pointing difficulties. By documenting successes we identify good practice, help it to be spread more widely and boost motivation and moral

We have extensive experience we can share with you of evaluating across:

  • Campaigning and policy work
  • Helplines
  • Development education  
  • Organisational development
  • Front-line services with a wide range of client groups: vulnerable families, alcohol misuse clients, homeless, women, young people and many more

Evaluation clients over the years have included: