My name is Emily Warn and I’m a senior partner at SocialQuarry, a social media consulting group that plans and analyzes online networks and social media for non-profits, foundations, and public agencies.  Today I’m going to be sharing a hot tip about using social media in evaluations.

This past week Facebook surpassed Google in US visitors, proof—if you needed one—that social networking sites are rapidly transforming our offline friendship, family, and work circles to online communities.

It’s obvious to anyone who has tried to ignore ads on Facebook and Twitter that social media is changing how for-profit companies advertise, sell products , and build their brands.  A plethora of tools exist—it seems like new ones are announced every day—to measure a company’s return on their investment (ROI) in social media.  For-profit companies can measure the success of social media campaigns, search engine optimization efforts, customer conversions from browsing to buying, mentions on Twitter, etc.

Not-for-profit organizations are also investing in social media; most are dabbling in Facebook and Twitter, but they lack the tools to measure their (ROI) because, for the most part, their reasons for using social media are very different than those for-profit uses. For example, tools developed to measure the success of advertising campaigns to sell handbags, don’t always work to measure the success of advocacy campaigns to change policies.  Plus, people who participate in advocacy campaigns are passionate about their cause and more likely to check related websites and social networking sites with a regularity that for-profits can only dream of.

Hot Tip: Here are some of the reasons why social networks can be a holy grail for many non-profits.  Non-profits can use social networks to help them:

• Increase capacity by using network to pool and share resources
• Coordinate groups working on a common issue
• Generate ideas and tap expertise to develop grant and advocacy strategies
• Raise money for capital campaigns and causes
• Increase a donor base and engage new donors
• Identify leaders who can expedite learning and coordinate actions across a network.

Hot Tip: Using for-profit tools to measure non-profit outcomes requires defining fundamentally different key progress indicators (KPI). For example, commercial companies can use web analytics tools to measure engagement with customers. They can define a number of units sold as a KPI for an ad campaign and measure progress against that goal by analyzing how many customers clicked-through to their site and bought a product.  Further analysis can reveal on which pages customers abandoned  the process of stepping through an online shopping cart.  Improving those pages improves customer engagement.

Non-profits could define a KPI for engagement as the number of network members who participated in a in collective actions? Instead of stepping through  a shopping cart, web analytics tools could measure how many people stepped through a process to send an email to a legislature, or signed up for a newsletter to stay informed about an advocacy campaign or stay connected with key people or organizations.

I hope this gives you some ideas about how you can incorporate some online tools in your own evaluations!

This contribution is from the aea365 Daily Tips blog, by and for evaluators, from the American Evaluation Association. Please consider contributing – send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org.

measurement, measuring outcomes, online, technology

Hello, I’m Tom Kelly and I have been supporting and managing evaluation investments and capacity-building since 1999 at The Annie E. Casey Foundation, a national philanthropy focused on achieving better outcomes for America’s most vulnerable children and families. Although I began my evaluation career 10 years before that working on evaluations of federal and state demonstration programs, my role now is one of evaluation trainer, coach, coordinator, facilitator, investor, and more often translator and broker between foundation program offices and evaluators.

Hot Tip: There are now more than 100,000 private, operating, family, and community foundations in the US. And my first-stop source for data and information on philanthropy is The Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy http://www.urban.org/center/cnp/ , including their National Center for Charitable Statistics http://nccs.urban.org/.

Rad Resource: The Ford Foundation’s GrantCraft is a library of tools and resources on grantmaking, including a series on evaluation. The next time you have a foundation client who might need some extra evaluation capacity-building point them to the evaluation resources at GrantCraft http://www.grantcraft.org/ and their Evaluation Series (see the sidebar).

Rad Resource: Good evaluators have a responsibility to educate their clients about evaluation (and it certainly makes our job easier with an informed client) and two great resources are “When and How to Use External Evaluators” http://www.irvine.org/assets/pdf/evaluation/when_how_external_evaluator.pdf and, of course, the AEA Guiding Principles http://www.eval.org/GPTraining/GPTrainingOverview.asp

Rad Resource: Although it is impossible to keep track of 100k foundations, I definitely feel like I know what is going in the field by following key bloggers in philanthropy. And the issues, challenges, and experiences of measurement, evaluation, data, and return on investment are all common topics:

• Lucy Bernholz at Philanthropy2173 http://www.philanthropy.blogspot.com/ and/or follow @p2173 on Twitter

• Sean Stannard-Stockton at Tactical Philanthropy http://tacticalphilanthropy.com/ and/or follow @tactphil

• Kris Putnam-Walkerly at Putnam CIC http://www.putnamcic.com/ and/or follow @Philanthropy411

foundations, grants, philanthropy, twitter

Hello, my name is Salvatore Alaimo and I am an Assistant Professor in the School of Public, Nonprofit and Health Administration at Grand Valley State University. I would like to share some tips on the evaluator’s role in evaluation capacity building with nonprofit organizations.

Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB) continues to gain momentum in the literature and in our profession thanks to scholars, researchers and practitioners such as Baizerman, Compton, & Stockdill; Bamberger, Rugh, & Mabry; Boyle, & Lemaire; Fetterman; Miller, Kobayashi, & Noble; Milstein, Chapel, Wetterhall, & Cotton; Patton; Presskill, & Russ-Eft; Sanders; Stufflebeam; Volkov, & King and others. Nonprofits have been challenged with meeting demands for evaluation from foundations, government agencies, the United Way and accrediting bodies, and face the question of what it takes to efficiently and effectively evaluate their programs.

These authors tell us that ECB is context dependent. The challenge we face as evaluators is determining what our specific role should be in ECB. Where is the line between helping a nonprofit organization develop evaluation capacity and becoming an enabler who contributes to co-dependency? Do we help the organization to continue without our assistance and work ourselves out of a job, or do we do just enough to get them started in the ECB process and leave them to continue to build capacity on their own? If we intervene too much, at what point are we taking on responsibilities and tasks best left for the organization’s stakeholders to build a culture for evaluation, mainstream it, and incorporate it into organizational learning?

These questions present challenges for our profession. There are tools we can use to help us navigate these dilemmas and incorporate into our decision making to strive to balance assisting nonprofits in ECB while leaving enough for them to enact on their own.

Hot Tip: I recommend two evaluation checklists by Stufflebeam and Volkov & King in the ECB category found on the Evaluation Center’s web site – http://www.wmich.edu/evalctr/checklists/checklistmenu.htm . I also recommend the program evaluation standards from the Joint Committee found on AEA’s web site at http://www.eval.org/EvaluationDocuments/progeval.html as well as the Guiding Principles for Evaluators at http://www.eval.org/Publications/aea06.GPBrochure.pdf . There are no magic pills or quick answers for working through the challenges of our role in ECB; however if you use these documents together in your ECB work, I believe you will find them extremely helpful in making wise choices and sound decisions.

This contribution is from the aea365 Daily Tips blog, by and for evaluators, from the American Evaluation Association. Please consider contributing – send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org.

Capacity Building, checklist, guiding principles, nonprofit

My name is Trina Willard and I currently exercise my evaluation and measurement skills as the Vice President of Transformation Systems, Inc., a management consulting firm. During my 15 years in the evaluation field, I have had wonderful opportunities to engage across all levels of service organizations, including work with executives, leadership teams and service delivery staff.

I have personally gained insight about successful evaluation strategies by working “in the trenches”, and a great appreciation for the challenges that service providers face daily in juggling multiple priorities. As a frequent consultant to nonprofit and government groups, I consistently find that these organizations are most successful when armed with a foundational understanding of evaluation. However, competing demands, particularly in relatively small organizations, can preclude attention to professional development on the evaluation front. In fact, sometimes evaluation is tackled as an afterthought detrimentally, and only considered after all other priorities are addressed. Consequently, I believe that building evaluation capacity in the nonprofit sector often “sticks” when it is presented as a process of incremental steps, created systematically over time. In addition, such organizations are often most receptive to a practical, applied approach to evaluation, as opposed to a predominantly academic perspective. I’d like to recommend a rad resource that nicely taps into both of these needs.

Rad Resource: Hallie Preskill & Darlene Russ-Eft (2005). Building Evaluation Capacity: 72 Activities for Teaching and Training. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. http://www.amazon.com/Building-Evaluation-Capacity-Activities-Teaching/dp/0761928103

Preskill & Russ-Eft do a great job of translating evaluation models, approaches, and techniques into relatable, hands-on exercises. The book is actually light on narrative “explanation”, but rather creates understanding through the direct implementation of tools and templates. As a trainer, I’ve used this resource repeatedly to illustrate evaluation principles for decision-makers and staff. One of my favorites: Activity 3, Evaluating Chocolate Chip Cookies Using Evaluation Logic. This exercise is always a hit at training events – a true example of learning in an enjoyable way! In addition, the text covers a wide variety of evaluation-relevant content, spanning topics such as ethics, political context, logic models, data collection, qualitative and quantitative analysis, budgeting for evaluation, and organizational buy-in. The layout easily facilitates training on one focused topic, or alternatively creation of a comprehensive training program.

I encourage you to give this resource a look. I’ll be interested to hear what you think!

This contribution is from the aea365 Daily Tips blog, by and for evaluators, from the American Evaluation Association. Please consider contributing – send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org.

Capacity Building, nonprofit, teaching, training

My name is Susan Kistler and I am the Executive Director for the American Evaluation Association. I contribute each Saturday’s post to the aea365 blog. This week I am writing from Atlanta at the Nonprofit Technology conference.

Do you work for or with nonprofit organizations? Have you experienced challenges due to financial constraints that make technology purchases for evaluation beyond the budget?

Hot Tip: Take a look at TechSoup, the “technology place for nonprofits.” TechSoup has resources, training, a peer-to-peer community, and a donated technology program – TechSoup Stock. Their donated tech program gives nonprofits access to products from a range of big name (and not so big name) companies. Examples include the full Microsoft Office Suite including Access and Excel; ArcGIS from ESRI for spatial analysis; and Crystal Reports from SAP for data visualization and reporting. And the cost? Each product has an administrative fee, but most are well below even discounted retail prices. As an example, the full Microsoft Office 2007 suite is $20. Organizations do need to go through a relatively painless qualification process, and the eligibility criteria vary from product to product, but the resource is definitely worth checking out.

The opinions expressed above are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer, the American Evaluation Association.

This contribution is from the aea365 Daily Tips blog, by and for evaluators, from the American Evaluation Association. Please consider contributing – send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org.

budget, free, Geographic information systems, GIS, nonprofit, reports, software, technology