Why invest in a program evaluation?
“Knowledge has three degrees: opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialects; of the third, intuition.” -Plotinus
Even the most well-constructed programs can benefit from a second opinion. Given the demands of our everyday work, it is easy to become absorbed in our own way of thinking: of looking at solutions myopically, going through the motions just to get something done, or hiding from second opinions because it might stymie a project or simply add onto the work. All of these tendencies are very human and an understandable product of demanding work environments. Unfortunately, they are to the detriment of our communities.
I chose to share the Plotinus quote here because it talks about "dialectics" as an instrument for scientific knowledge. In order to have a dialogue, you need two or more people. In other words, knowledge comes from sharing information as a collective. There is always more we can learn from each other.
Here is what you can gain from a program evaluation, whether your program is newly launched or several years old:
It can identify new ways for you to talk about your program's impact with funders and supporters. An effective program evaluation will look at your metrics. Often, we confuse "outputs" with "outcomes." For example, an organization might state, "We served fresh produce to 100 people," which is an output or an activity; however, a supporter will respond far more to you talking about your outcomes, i.e.: "As a direct result of our fresh produce program, 100 clients accessed nutritional foods that they could not access in their neighborhoods, 75% learned something new about healthy eating, and 80% stated they were saving money by cooking at home with these ingredients." It can be a struggle to identify what, exactly, successful outcomes look like, but an evaluation can help you pinpoint them and strategize how to better measure them.
It can offer fresh perspective on how to do things. Maybe there is an easier or less expensive way to implement your program. Maybe there are technological solutions to your capacity challenges or service backlog. Maybe there are smoother ways to measure your success. You won't know until you engage in a dialogue about it.
It can help you identify opportunities for growth. Everything looks different up close versus 10,000 feet up. If you are planning to grow your impact, an evaluation from an outside consultant can shed light on your infrastructural capacity to scale your growth appropriately.
It can help identify unexpected areas of impact as well as unintended consequences. Sometimes we set out to accomplish A & B but end up solving X. Just the same, sometimes there are unintended negative consequences to programs, and sometimes there are delightfully unexpected outcomes. I'll give two examples -- The accidental discovery of penicillin saved millions of lives, even though it was not what the initial study set out to discover (had a contaminated petri dish simply been thrown away, our world would be very different!). Sometimes we are so focused on one outcome that we lose our imagination around "what could be." My second example relates to unintended consequences: over the past twenty years, there has been a movement to install clean cookstoves in India to improve health outcomes for low-income households and address climate change, but after millions of dollars in "clean stove" donations and several years of campaigning, it was found no impact had been made and in some areas health outcomes actually worsened. A full review of your program can illuminate positive trends that you might not be seeing, as well as critical areas that might need to be addressed.