Communicating Evaluation Findings: Advice from the Field
An interesting post on the Learning Portal for Design, Monitoring and Evaluation for Peacebuilding that focuses on communicating evaluation findings and brings forward three tips for those who hope to influence decisions with evaluation data:
- Answer the right questions;
- Speak their language;
- Be humble.
Insights into NGO advocacy evaluation
A group of leading NGOs have published a comparative study (pdf) on what they are doing in practice on advocacy evaluation. Participating NGOs are: ActionAid International, Amnesty International, Bread for the World, CARE USA , Greenpeace International, ONE, Oxfam and the Sierra Club.
Following is a summary from the study:
For organizations committed to social change, advocacy often figures as a crucial strategic element. How to assess effectiveness in advocacy is, therefore, important. The usefulness of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) in advocacy are subject to much current debate. Advocacy staff, MEL professionals, senior managers, the funding community, and stakeholders of all kinds are searching for ways to improve practices – and thus their odds of success – in complex and contested advocacy environments.
This study considers what a selection of leading advocacy organizations are doing in practice. We set out to identify existing practice and emergent trends in advocacy-related MEL practice, to explore current challenges and innovations. The study presents perceptions of how MEL contributes to advocacy effectiveness, and reviews the resources and structures dedicated to MEL.
Webinar – Presenting evaluation findings and evidence-based organizational learning
I’m happy to announce that next week – Friday April 26th – I’ll be participating in a webinar presented by SEA Change community of practice. Further details and link to registration:
This webinar titled “Presenting evaluation findings and evidence-based organizational learning” has been developed based on requests by SEA Change CoP members to learn more about presenting evaluation findings and the pre-requisites for their organization to better learn from evaluation findings.
Mr. Glenn O’Neil, evaluation expert and communications professional, will look at how to present evaluation finding with a focus on different messages for different stakeholders in order to improve the use of evaluation findings. After that he will discuss what it takes to become an evidence-based learning organization and give some guidance on how to improve evidence-based learning in your organization.
Join us for a Webinar on April 26 (14:00 ICT / 9:00 CET).
Eight short webinars on evaluation
The BetterEvaluation website is partnering with the American Evaluation Association to present a series of short webinars (20 minutes each) on evaluation in May 2013, subjects covered include:
- Define What Is To Be Evaluated
- Understand Causes of Outcomes and Impacts
- Synthesise Data from One or More Evaluations
- Report and Support Use of Findings
5th European Summit on Measurement announced
“Unlocking business performance- The role of communications research and analytics” is the theme of the 5th European Summit on Measurement of PR and communications – to be held in Madrid from 5 -7 June, 2013.
The Summit is presented by AMEC, the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication. The Summit will include workshop sessions, discussion groups and plenary speaking spots by international senior communications professionals.
The voices of affected populations in evaluation
The notion of listening to the voices of the affected populations is nothing new in humanitarian evaluation. However, in the past there has been a lot of talk with little action. The Listening Project is one of the first structured and global initiatives to look at this issue – not only from the evaluation perspective but more broadly – and have recently produced a summary study Time to Listen: Hearing People on the Receiving End of International Aid (pdf) based on discussions with almost 6,000 people in 20 countries. You can also read a news report about this issue on IRIN news.
As part of a stakeholder consultations I’ve been involved with for the Joint Standards Initiative, we’ve also been listening to affected populations – from Senegal to Pakistan to Mexico. The video below provides some short excerpts of interviews with affected populations, in addition to humanitarian workers from these consultations.
Blogging the evaluation process
Blogging and other social media are often used as part of a communicating evaluation results – that is, once the evaluation is finished. However, blogging can also be useful to communicate the evaluation process – that is, as the evaluation is collecting data. I’ve recently been involved in a stakeholder consultation for the Joint Standards Initiative, where as part of communicating the progess of the consultation, myself and the other team members have been blogging “snapshots from the consultation” – from various and diverse locations such as Beirut, Juba and Richard Toll (Senegal).
This we found useful to provide stakeholders with an update of our work and offer some insights into our initial findings.
(The image above is taken from a discussion in Cairo by team member Inji El Abd)
