3 Evaluation Plan Must-Haves

It’s sad, but true -- evaluation plans aren’t always the page-turners we’d love for them to be. These standard documents are often required within grant applications as structured templates that allow for minimal customization.  Now, keep in mind, those templates certainly provide essential information!  In fact, we have our own favorite resources for standard evaluation plans, including CDC’s Developing an Effective Evaluation Plan, Better Evaluation’s Evaluation Plan resource page, and the Corporation for National and Community Service presentation, How to Write an Evaluation Plan and Report. 

But if you stick to just the standard templates, sometimes you miss out on the practical components that can be most helpful to your team.  Below we’re sharing the 3 additions we’ve found to be most useful to our partners – your “What x How” table, your timeline, and your data checklist.

Your “What x How” Table

Your WHAT?  Your “What x How Table” is a grid that crosswalks WHAT you need to measure (ex: evaluation questions or performance measures) with HOW you plan to measure it (ex: each evaluation tool or method you’ll use for the initiative).  This basic but helpful grid will give you the space to capture and reflect on the necessary components within each of your tools / methods.  By doing this work upfront, you can catch gaps in your approach, such as realizing you didn’t have a way to evaluate a particular performance measure.  Believe it or not, it comes in handy as a reference check during the analysis and reporting phase, too!

Your Timeline

As you know, timing is everything.  No one wants to get to the end of a program cycle and realize the exit surveys were never administered!  Before you wrap up your evaluation plan, take the time to map out when every evaluation activity will occur – from every data collection moment to report deadlines.  Some of our partners prefer to track these dates in list formats, others through a more visual Gantt chart, and still others in their team’s online task management system.  No matter the format, the important thing is that you and your team have a strong sense of evaluation timing so there are no missed surveys or surprise deadlines at the end of the year. 

Your Data Checklist

We can’t think of a time when a program had just one data source; in fact, from our experience, program teams are pulling together data from multiple sources and audiences to provide a holistic view of their work.  We applaud this strategy, but we also know that it can be challenging to manage so many data sources.  Enter: Your Data Checklist.  This handy addition to an evaluation plan can provide your team with a list of all data sources, the person responsible for submitting the data, and when it was received.  By having one place to manage data submission, you will know when you have all the data you need for analysis and reporting.

Still looking for more support?  Just reach out -- we’d love to connect!