Guest Post by Bernadette Sangalang, Ph.D.

Bernadette Sangalang, Ph.D., is an independent consultant (past research and evaluation director for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and evaluation officer for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation).

Many nonprofit organizations recognize the value of evaluation and using data for decision-making, but they often struggle with insufficient time, resources, and expertise to develop and implement an organizational practice of evaluation. Having worn different hats in my work with nonprofit organizations – as evaluation consultant, funder, and nonprofit evaluation director – I have encountered positive and negative reactions to evaluation. In my experience, when nonprofits hear the word evaluation, they may run away, their eyes may glaze over, or they may claim they don’t need it. To some, evaluation is a scary word. To others, it’s a foreign language. But in reality it’s neither.

For the nonprofit leader, evaluation is your friend. It really is! Michael Quinn Patton, evaluation expert and author of Utilization-Focused Evaluation provides a practical definition of program evaluation as: “the systematic collection of information [i.e., data] about activities, characteristics, and outcomes of programs to make judgments about the program, improve program effectiveness, and/or inform decisions about future programming.” In other words, evaluation is about using data to help you make decisions about your work, learn about your progress, plan for next steps, and communicate successes or challenges.

Given that the NGen Fellows’ project focuses on using data for leading the nonprofit sector, here are five tips for fostering an organizational practice of evaluation and using data. With just a few simple (and perhaps some not so simple) steps, emerging nonprofit leaders can be on the road to being more evaluation-savvy and increasing their effectiveness.

1. Develop a roadmap for understanding your organization’s intended impact. Having a clear theory of change or logic model is useful for understanding your organization’s activities and intended impact. These tools help you answer: “What does success look like? And how are you going to get there?” Developing these tools with staff provides a great way to get buy-in and agreement on outcomes and impact that you’re all working towards. Once developed, these tools will help you communicate what you're doing to key audiences, including staff, funders, constituents, and the community. Kellogg Foundation and also Grantcraft have helpful resources on developing a theory of change and logic model.
2. Collect data. Then USE the data you collect. Develop a plan for collecting and using data for continuous improvement. The type of data you collect should be aligned with your roadmap, your theory of change or logic model. Data you collect will help you answer: “What did you do? And how well did you do it?” Innovation Network’s Evaluation Plan Builder is a good resource for identifying evaluation questions and developing data collection strategies.
3. Establish a practice of regularly reviewing your data. Develop a dashboard, which is one type of reporting tool to facilitate the review and analysis of your data. Similar to the dashboard on your car, an organization or program dashboard provides information at a glance that indicates performance or progress during a particular time period. Regular review of your dashboard with staff, senior management, and board encourages learning about how the organization is doing and where to improve for greater impact. The Indianapolis Museum of Art’s dashboard is a popular example. Many have written or blogged about nonprofit dashboards. Juice Analytics has A Guide to Creating Dashboards People Love to Use to help you with data visualization when creating your dashboard.
4. Invest in a data system. Even if you only have basic programs like Excel or Access, use them to store your data. Paper records as your main source for data can be just as useless as not having any data. Get into the habit of entering data into the computer on a regular basis. Many data systems have nonprofit rates such as Salesforce or FileMaker. If you already have an existing data system, Tableau is a great, easy to use, data visualization tool for creating charts and graphs.
5. Invest in yourself to be more evaluation-savvy. You don’t have to be an evaluator to play with data. Find staff development opportunities to increase your expertise with data, such as The Evaluators’ Institute, American Evaluation Association’s Summer Institute, or the Evaluation Fellowship Program.