Ex-post Eval Week: Tips for Conducting an Ex-Post Evaluation by Wendi Bevins

I am Wendi Bevins, and when my boss told me in 2017 that we were going to conduct an ex-post evaluation, I was thrilled. At the time I was the Monitoring and Evaluation Manager at Lutheran World Relief[1] (LWR).

I was thrilled to go back to a closed project and evaluate it against our original theory of change, test our assumptions, and see if our approaches were sustainable beyond the end of a project. We could really learn some valuable lessons. And all those things were true, but they came alongside some useful lessons about human nature, which I offer here as suggestions to anyone who wants to conduct an ex-post.

Hot Tip: Manage Expectations

Ex-post results, like any evaluation’s results, will not be entirely clear, and some will be disappointing. In my own experience, I pinned my hopes on an assumption and was disappointed when the result was murky. These kinds of realities do not mean that an ex-post is a bad investment, but they do mean that stakeholders should be prepared early in the planning stage to manage their expectations. Then stakeholders are more likely to use the findings effectively where they do point to a clear (if unexpected) path forward and they aren’t tempted to dismiss all the findings out of hand. While that is true for nearly all evaluations, it is especially true for ex posts because the stakes feel higher.

Lessons Learned: How you apply findings matters almost as much as the findings themselves

Your ex-post will definitely yield findings. You will not know ahead of time what those findings are, and as I learned, you should resist the urge to guess what they will be. However, having a way to apply the findings is important. The value of the ex-post is tied up in an organization’s ability to make use of its findings. In the case of our first ex post evaluation, we applied what we learned to an organization-wide strategy that was being developed as the ex post ended. Like other evaluation findings, ex post findings can also be valuable in the development of new tools or the design of new programming, but even better because they give a longer time frame for reflection.

Rad Resources: Practical Tips and Examples

In partnership with World Vision US, LWR compiled a set of practical tips for planning and carrying out an ex-post evaluation. It reflects our lessons learned over 11 ex post evaluations across the two organizations, such as selecting the right project; hiring an evaluator; and staying future-oriented. LWR also condensed the most transferrable lessons from our two ex post evaluations into user-friendly summaries: the Tanzanian Grape Value Chain project and Nicaraguan Gender-Sensitive Food Security project.

I hope if you are fortunate enough to participate in an ex-post evaluation that these tips give you a good head start.

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[1] Lutheran World Relief and IMA World Health have since created Corus International, an ensemble of for-profit and non-profit organizations with social impact missions.

This week, AEA365 is celebrating Ex-post Eval Week during which blog authors share lessons from project exits and ex-post evaluations. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. 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.