This was originally posted on Philanthropy Front and Center-Atlanta.
Happy New Year! With a fresh start in 2015, how will you approach and evaluate your organization’s efforts? Here are a few reports to get you thinking about evaluation and program planning in the new year:
Nonprofit Performance Management: Using Data to Measure and Improve Programs
Tracking and measuring data can give nonprofits a better understanding of the populations they serve and how they serve them, and help them identify areas to improve their reach and the efficiency of their programs. But many nonprofits struggle to track data--or even to define what data they should be tracking.
Using data to improve your programs can pose a number of challenges. You might be limited by time, budget, and staffing restraints, or unsure of how to proceed. How are successful nonprofits implementing their data practices? What software are they using? What obstacles are they facing, and how are they overcoming them?
Evaluating Networks for Social Change
This document provides profiles of nine evaluations that detail key questions, methodologies, implementation and results while expanding what is known about assessment approaches that fit how networks develop and function.
Knowledge Management: A Discovery Process
Getting strategic about how you organize and redistribute knowledge can help just about anyone achieve their goals more efficiently. We at The McKnight Foundation often find ourselves at the center of meaty, data-rich, analytic conversations. This case study summarizes our yearlong exploration and planning to consume, organize, and share knowledge better.
Guide to Evaluating Collective Impact
As collective impact has gained traction across the globe, demand has grown for an effective approach to evaluating collective impact initiatives that meets the needs of various interested parties. Collective impact practitioners seek timely, high-quality data that enables reflection and informs strategic and tactical decision making. Funders and other supporters require an approach to performance measurement and evaluation that can offer evidence of progress toward the initiative's goals at different points along the collective impact journey.
This three-part report responds to these needs by offering practitioners, funders, and evaluators a way to think about, plan for, and implement different performance measurement and evaluation activities.
Evaluating Complexity: Propositions for Improving Practice
This practice brief is intended to bring together knowledge about systems change, complexity, and evaluation in a way that clarifies and describes how the practice of evaluation needs to evolve to better serve the social sector.
To find additional resources, search IssueLab or the Catalog of Nonprofit Literature using keyword "evaluation" or phrase "program evaluations."
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