Susan Kistler on Evaluation Contract Resources

I’m Susan Kistler, the American Evaluation Association’s Executive Director. Today, I thought I’d write about a few resources available if you are developing evaluation contracts.

Rad Resource: James Bell offered a session at Evaluation 2010 on Contracting for Evaluation Products and Services. He offered advice in five areas: creating a feasible, agreed-upon concept plan; developing a well-defined request for proposals (RFP); selecting a well-qualified evaluator team that will fulfill the sponsor’s intent; constructively monitoring interim progress; and ensuring the quality and usefulness of major evaluation products. His session slides are available for free download.

Rad Resource: Melanie Hwalek of SPEC associations has shared an Evaluation Contract Template that she uses via the AEA pubic eLibrary. She also offered great tips for Evaluation Contracts in an aea365 post back in February of 2010.

Rad Resource: Daniel Stufflebeam developed an Evaluation Contracts Checklist “designed to help evaluators and clients to identify key contractual issues and make and record their agreements for conducting an evaluation.” It may be downloaded from the Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University along with a number of other evaluation-focused checklists.

Rad Resource: The American Evaluation Association has a vibrant Independent Consultants Topical Interest Group (TIG) that has the most active discussion list of any of AEA’s 40+ TIGs. If you’re not an AEA member, consider joining today, building your network, and learning from their collective expertise.

If you have ideas or resources to share regarding evaluation contracts, add them to the comments for this post!

Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.

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