Assessing Your Impact

Resources and Getting Started

Three kinds of resources need to be considered when thinking about program evaluation: time, money, and staff capability. The presence or absence of any of these strongly influences whether or not a particular question can be addressed in any given evaluation. Specifically, there are some questions that may require specialized expertise, extended time, or a large investment of resources. In some cases, access to these resources may not be readily available.

Before beginning any evaluation it is important to answer a few questions:

• What is the goal/purpose of the evaluation?
• Is it required?
• Is it the right time to conduct an evaluation?
• What data and information are needed?
• Who should design the evaluation?
• Who should carry out the evaluation?
• Who is the audience for the evaluation?
• What are their expectations?
• How will the evaluation be used?

Once these preliminary questions have been answered then the next step is to determine what type of evaluation should be conducted.