Nonprofit Program Evaluation Made Simple: Get your Data. Show your Impact. Improve your Programs.

by Chari Smith

Overview

Are you overwhelmed on how to do nonprofit program evaluation?

You're not alone. Chari's here to help!

There are many ways to do program evaluation, making it difficult to know how to start. In this book, Chari outlines a clear approach, filled with real world stories as well as examples of evaluation plans, surveys, and reports.

Key topics addressed:

• Understand how to build buy-in for evaluation and address staff resistance and make a realistic program evaluation plan
• Create measurable outcomes for both grant applications and to guide program improvement
• Develop an impact and/or logic model that visually communicates what your program does and the difference it makes
• Create useful surveys that measure what matters
• Understand the choices in how to manage your data - spreadsheets v. database solutions
• Basic data analysis and reporting to make meaning of your data

Included with the book is a link to a companion website filled with downloadable real world examples and templates.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780578803883
Publisher:	Chari Smith
Publication date:	01/12/2021
Pages:	246
Sales rank:	224,746
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.52(d)

About the Author

Chari believes evaluation should be accessible, practical and usable. She is a seasoned veteran in evaluation design, instrument development, data collection, quantitative and qualitative data analysis, findings dissemination, and utilizing findings. She has taught several workshops helping nonprofit professionals understand the value and use of program evaluation. She is also a wife, mother, jazz pianist, singer/songwriter, and devoted yogi.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Part One: Get Ready

Chapter 1: What is Program Evaluation?

Chapter 2: Understand the Terminology

Chapter 3: Plan Your Resources

Chapter 4: Build a Culture of Evaluation

Chapter 5: Align Planning with Reporting

Part Two: Make Your Plan

Chapter 6: Engage in Discovery

Chapter 7: Define Measurable Outcomes

Chapter 8: Create Your Logic or Impact Model

Chapter 9: Determine Your Methodology

Chapter 10: Develop the Timeline and Workflow

Chapter 11: Put It All Together

Part Three: Collect Your Data

Chapter 12: Manage Program Data

Chapter 13: Design Realistic Surveys

Part Four: Create Your Reports

Chapter 14: Data Analysis Basics

Chapter 15: Create the External Report

Chapter 16: Create the Internal Report

Chapter 17: Use Your Data

Final Thoughts

References

Editorial Reviews

The ability to measure impact and share that success with the world is foundational to a thriving nonprofit and unlocks doors leading to visibility and funding. Leaders mistakenly believe that the process is too expensive, too timing consuming or that their kind of work can't be measured. Chari's approach to program evaluation will bust these myths and unlock these doors - offering a simple and accessible approach to your efforts to invite more people to know more and do more for your cause.

Joan Garry

Author of Nonprofits are Messy

Principal at Joan Garry Consulting and Founder of Nonprofit Leadership Lab

Understanding your organization's impact requires using data to learn and improve on a regular basis and that can be a daunting task. In this book, Chari Smith has demystified the process of creating an effective evaluation process for nonprofits. The book offers many practical tips that will help your organization improve results.

Beth Kanter

Virtual Facilitator, Trainer, and Author

Making the complex simple, the complicated doable, the abstract concrete, and the frightening friendly takes a special combination of expertise, experience, and communications skill. Chari Smith brings all that and more to this accessible, important, and insightful book. Read, learn, and engage.

Michael Quinn Patton

Founder and CEO

Utilization-Focused Evaluation

This book provides an excellent blueprint for nonprofits to follow as Smith outlines all the necessary steps to get from the idea phase of evaluation to creating reports and communicating the data in a way that shows impact of your program(s) that stakeholders, community members and funders will all understand and appreciate.

Jean Hansen

Vice President - School Partnerships and Youth Outreach

Special Olympics Oregon

From the Publisher