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Most evaluators are hired to evaluate something: a program, grant-funded activities, or a new approach. But what do you do if you get asked to build capacity in evaluation? That is, to help another team or organization build up their ability to do their own future evaluations?

There are a few courses available that can help someone build their capacity in evaluation (Hint: Check out our Program Evaluation for Program Managers course!), but maybe the team wants an evaluation consultant’s help to design the process and tools in a way that can be sustained in-house. This was exactly the ask on a recent contract for me.

The Ask: Help us evaluate our impact in a way that we can monitor, review, and sustain on our own!

The start of this work wasn’t all that different from a program that I would evaluate.

I sought to find out:

• What do you want to know and why?

• How will you use it?

I held the same kick-off meeting as I normally do (Check out: The Art of Writing Evaluation Questions; Evaluation Kick-Off Meeting Agenda (Template); How to Kick Off Your Evaluation Kick-Off Meeting). I figured, at the end of the day, this was still about designing a program evaluation. The key difference was that instead of our team implementing the evaluation, we had to train their staff to do it: the data collection, the analysis, and the resulting action.

After understanding what they wanted to be able to monitor by outlining key evaluation questions, we started working on a toolkit. We had a vision that a toolkit could be a one-stop shop for all things related to this evaluation – a place any member of the organization could reference to understand the evaluation process and learn how to do it. At the start of this journey, our proposed table of contents for this toolkit was quite vague and high-level. It contained things like, “What is the process?” or “Where do I find the data collection tools?” But the more we field tested (more on this later), the more we kept building out what the toolkit included.

I gained a lot of learnings from this process. Here are some of my top takeaways:

Consent.

The Learning: We can’t take for granted that others know about the informed consent process. Most staff at an organization probably don’t go about collecting personal information and experiences and likely haven’t thought about informed consent in a meaningful way.

The Capacity Building: A big part of our toolkit focused on defining consent: why it’s important and the processes to obtain it. We even shared some Eval Academy content: Consent Part 1: What is Informed Consent, Consent Part 2: Do I need to get consent? How do I do that?.

Confidentiality and anonymity.

The Learning: Part of consent covers whether obtained information will be kept confidential or anonymous. This raised another key learning: most staff don’t think about what this actually means or how it’s done. Often staff assume (correctly or incorrectly) that their organization has policies in place, and they wouldn’t be allowed to do things if it were unethical. This isn’t always true.

The Capacity Building: We included in the toolkit some key information on what confidentiality and anonymity mean (Your information will be kept confidential: Confidentiality and Anonymity in Evaluation), and we supplemented with specific details about how these concepts should be applied in their setting, including when it may be necessary to disclose information and how to do that.

Interviewing skills.

The Learning: The organization wanted to use volunteers, with a range of backgrounds, to do client interviews. Interviewing for evaluation is a learned skill. We had to figure out how translate interviewing skills into something that could be learned independently and quickly.

The Capacity Building: We came up with Tip Sheets: Tips for Conducting Interviews.  We even created mock interviews and recorded them for training purposes. Because we wouldn’t be there to run the training, we wanted to make sure these volunteers were offered some direction, so we included a worksheet for the trainees to reflect on the recorded interviews as part of their training:  Why was the interviewer asking that? Why was that wording used? What did the interviewer do when the interviewee said this…? etc. We provided materials on the role of an interviewer – not as a therapist, but as an empathetic listener, and ensured that the interviewer would have access to a list of community resources if needed. We also raised some awareness about vulnerable populations, and offered some preparation for scenarios that might occur with individuals who are feeling distress.

Analysis.

The Learning: Completing data collection is just part of an evaluation. We knew this organization didn’t have a lot of capacity or expertise to be diving into Excel spreadsheets and applying complex data analysis. We also recognized that being a keeper of data was an important consideration with key responsibilities.

The Capacity Building: We built a dashboard. The team could gather survey data in Excel and auto populate a dashboard at any time, which would then visualize key learnings for them. We included a step-by-step instruction guide to help them out. To inform about responsibilities in data stewardship, we shared our Eval Academy data stewardship infographic.

Reporting and reflection.

The Learning: We knew that there is risk in evaluation processes running in the background with out providing value or being used. The dashboard was a good start, but we really wanted to support this organization to use the information they were gathering. Also, some data were qualitative and not well represented in the dashboard.

The Capacity Building: We built a report template with headings that signalled where to find information that may answer their key questions. We also built a list of reflective questions that would help them to think about their data and what potential actions were possible. These questions can be found in: Questions to Get You Thinking about Your Data. While we didn’t attempt to train qualitative data analysis, our report template directed staff to specific qualitative questions that would provide insights.

This all sounds kind of straight forward, right? We thought about what a team needs to know about evaluation and built them those things. Not so! This entire process was iterative – more of a two-steps-forward-one-step-back kind of journey. With each new idea (“Ah, they need to know about consent”), we would learn of something else to add (“Oh, they also need to know more about confidentiality”). To help with this process we did a lot of field testing.

We loosely followed a Plan Do Study Act quality improvement format. We’d get a staff member to test the process on 3-5 clients, we’d huddle and talk about what worked well, what didn’t and what unexpected things we encountered, then we tweaked and repeated. Eventually we landed in a spot that seemed to work well.

At the end of it all, the Toolkit (now with a capital T!) was pretty large, and we ended up breaking it up into three core sections.

1. Describe the process: who does what when, what role requirements exist for various roles, links to find data tools, and links to resources. We also included some email invitation templates, scripting for consent, and a tracking log.

2. Training: the second section focused on those niche skills that may come as second nature to a seasoned evaluator – this is where we included mock interview recordings, tip sheets, confidentiality, and consent primers, when and if to disclose information, and how to be a good data steward.

3. Reporting: the final section described what to do with the information – the dashboard, the report template, the reflective questions, and a recommended timeline. We created step-by-step instructions for how to get data from an online survey platform into the dashboard and from the dashboard into the report.

This was a really different experience for me, and I learned a lot about slowing down, explaining the process, and not making assumptions. It’s strange not to follow-up to see how the process is working. We left them with the final recommendation that all evaluation processes should be reviewed – there is risk in going into autopilot. Evaluation processes are only worthy if they are answering key questions and providing actionable insights.

I think it was really insightful and good future planning for this organization to understand the value of evaluation and to want to learn more about it so they could do it on their own. However, there is risk in evaluation being completed internally, without evaluation expertise. There may be pressures to show good results, and there is always the risk that data will be interpreted or used inappropriately. In this example, there was the additional risk in using untrained volunteers to interview clients. There was an attempt to mitigate some of these risks by consulting with an external evaluator to design the tools and process. We were able to skill-up their staff and have confidence they are equipped with an evaluation process, tools, and knowledge to conduct their own reviews.