Challenge:
A variety of peace building programs
A small peace building nonprofit led a variety of programs to build participants skills in fostering peace. Some they offered themselves others in conjunction with local partners, others they offered to their own audience.
Needed: One easy to implement program evaluation system
The organization needed to build a system for evaluating these programs in order to be able to improve the programs, as well as demonstrate results to donors and institutional funders. In addition, creat
Solution
Seeing the big picture
In order to fully understand the full context for each individual program, Grace Social Sector Consulting began by focusing on the organizational level. We facilitated a session including staff and board to update the organization’s theory of change. The founder had created the theory of change when he first started the organization but few people had seen it.
As we updated the theory of change, we added the assumptions that undergird the activities and programs and their expected short term-, medium term- and long term outcomes. By doing this, board members and other staff better understood the ‘why’ behind the set of programs that the organization was seeking to design and launch.
As we updated the theory of change, we added the assumptions that undergird the activities and programs and their expected short term-, medium term- and long term outcomes. By doing this, board members and other staff better understood the ‘why’ behind the set of programs that the organization was seeking to design and launch.
Working at the program level: logic models
We then worked on creating logic models for the organization’s current youth program as well as their training programs for adults.
Through research, we found organizations that had already created robust evaluation processes for their peace building programs who shared their materials publicly.
In addition we assessed the staff’s capacity to consistently implement evaluation processes and sought ways to simplify the evaluation process.
To not do unnecessary work and to create a streamlined system, we designed a set of survey questions inspired by the work of the partner organization that could be applied to both the individual units of the youth program as well as the trainings for adults.
Through research, we found organizations that had already created robust evaluation processes for their peace building programs who shared their materials publicly.
In addition we assessed the staff’s capacity to consistently implement evaluation processes and sought ways to simplify the evaluation process.
To not do unnecessary work and to create a streamlined system, we designed a set of survey questions inspired by the work of the partner organization that could be applied to both the individual units of the youth program as well as the trainings for adults.
Results
Building a larger data set through a streamlined evaluation system
With this, the organization could more readily summarize their results and build a data set with a larger sample size than if they had created a separate and unique evaluation for each program. This greatly simplified implementation for staff and increased the likelihood of continued attention to program evaluation beyond the specific grant deliverables that prompted the project.