Evaluating Projects
As well as evaluating the overall partnership plan, the partnership will benefit from the evaluation of individual projects throughout the year. It is unlikely that the partnership will want or need to evaluate every project that it undertakes, but it is important that the evaluations that are undertaken make a meaningful contribution to the following year’s strategic assessment. In deciding which initiatives to evaluate, you may want to consider:
- The scope of the work.
- The cost of the work.
- The lack of existing knowledge of the effectiveness of the approach.
- The level of public interest in the work.
- The balance of outcomes gained verses effort to evaluate.
- The novelty of the approach being adopted.
Generally speaking, the more of the above that feature in a project, the more reason there will be for a partnership to evaluate it. Occasionally, with particularly sensitive or difficult pieces of work, partnerships may also need to factor into their decision making the possibility of adverse or unexpected consequences of the work or a disproportionate impact of the work on one group of people verses another, particularly in relation to race or ethnicity. We would strongly recommend that projects be evaluated if they have a very large budget, a stipulation in a grant or a funding arrangement that requires an evaluation or a report back to funding bodies. Evaluation is also vital where projects involve a novel or unusual approach, particularly where the existing evidence base may be poor or the theory of change unproven.
