Evaluation Checklist

These days, this sector is filled with talk of evaluation and measurement and metrics. As consultants to community benefit / nonprofit organizations, we are often the ones encouraging our clients to measure their performance.

We teach clients how to move from measuring “outputs” to “outcomes” – the results that matter for their clients and their communities. We can often be heard saying something like, “Don’t tell me how many people you served. Tell me what was different for those people after you served them!”

We try to teach our clients that measurement can be aspirational (Are we getting closer to our goals?) rather than punitive (We are measuring because others are making us do so.) We provide self-assessment-tools for boards, for fundraising, for overall organizational capacity.

The Elephant-In-The-Room
If we consultants are going to walk our talk – as we discussed during last month’s chat on transparency – are we measuring our own performance?

  • Are we walking the measurement talk? Assessing our own effectiveness?
  • If so, how are we doing so? Do we do it regularly, as part of our work, or when we’re doing our annual plan? (Let’s save “Do you have a plan for your practice?” for another walking-the-talk chat…)
  • Do you ask clients to measure your performance? Against what metrics? Are there clearly articulated goals for the work? And are those “output” goals (i.e. deliverables) or are they “outcome” goals (i.e. the difference those deliverables are making, and for whom…)
  • Are you using a self-assessment to measure your own effectiveness? If so, what are you measuring?
  • If we are going to measure what matters, what DOES matter? What would great “Consultant Result Measurement” actually measure? What might that look like?
  • What would it take to aim all our work – from proposal to project evaluation – at outcomes rather than deliverables?

That’s the elephant we will be talking about in this month’s chat.

And what better topic to announce that this month we will begin extending the chat in two ways:

  1. The chat will be 90 minutes. If you have to leave after an hour, no worries, because…
  2. The discussion will continue here at the NPCons blog. In that way folks who miss the chat (or portions thereof) will be able to take part in the discussion. And we will be able to develop thinking over the course of days and weeks, rather than just an hour.

So we’ll see you at Twitter on Tuesday, June 15 at 1pm US PT. And then we’ll see you here at the blog when the chat is done!