OL-ECB TIG Week: Making Sustainability Fit in Evaluation Capacity Building by Dr. Tatiana Bustos

Hello,

My name is Dr. Tatiana Bustos. I’m an implementation support specialist and evaluator in the public sector. I’m here to discuss sustainability and offer tips to embed it into organizational learning for evaluations.

Sustainability matters

Think of a community initiative that you know should be sustained because of its benefits to marginalized communities. Now, consider the alternative outcome of not sustaining that program. If that program isn’t sustained, the stakes are high. We risk compromising new or existing relationships, which can foster mistrust and pessimism, eroding foundations of trust needed for future collaborations with communities. We also lose the ability to offer services that contribute to better health and wellbeing of communities. With the stakes high, it is vital that we define, plan, and evaluate program sustainability.

What is sustainability? Across sectors, like public health and education, there are inconsistencies in how we define sustainability. Is it program continuation? Is it workforce retention? Is it maintenance of individual level outcomes? In a broader sense, sustainability refers to the extent to which structures or processes are in place that allow a program to leverage resources to successfully implement and maintain activities over time. Across my own experiences, however, I often see sustainability viewed synonymously with funding, but it is much more than that. Sustainability is multidimensional and dynamic, vacillating between process, context, and outcomes.

The increased demand for evaluating program sustainability hasn’t been fully addressed. We might not hear “sustainability” in discussions until after the program has ended. However, the multidimensionality of sustainability supports the recommendation of planning for sustainability as early as when you are designing for implementation. Sustainability remains a challenge for many organizations. Recognizing the value of sustainability and the importance of early planning, I started to incorporate relevant measures into evaluation plans. There are opportunities to build organizational capacities for assessing sustainability with learnings in evaluation practice. Here are some quick tips to start.

Hot Tips

What are we sustaining?

Discuss sustainability early and often! Discussions about sustainability should be part of the planning process and revisited for any changes needed, given its dynamic and iterative nature.

Identify what you are trying to sustain.

Once you identify what you want to sustain, you’ll have more clarity in approaching how to sustain. Make sure you are engaging key partners in this process to develop shared meaning and language.

How are we sustaining it?

The next step is planning how you will sustain. This should be done in collaboration with key partners to ensure shared accountability for getting started on an action plan. An action plan should include:

• The vision: who will be involved, what will happen
• The change goals: what are you sustaining, what are intended sustainability outcomes
• Timeline
• Engagement of key leaders and partners
• Identifying barriers/facilitators to change goals
• Develop the monitoring and evaluation plan that incorporates aspects of sustainability.

Make sure to leverage relevant theories or frameworks to plan approaches for sustainability. Theories and frameworks provide a better understanding of how sustainability interacts with socioecological contexts. Be thoughtful and intentional about how the surrounding contextual factors play a role.

How are we evaluating?

By outlining the what and how, you can structure an evaluation around those components to assess capacity for sustainability or examine factors influencing sustainability outcomes. The goal here is not to determine whether sustainability was accomplished; instead, the initial focus of the evaluation would be to assess whether the program is headed in the right direction and what changes, if any, are needed to get there. It can have a lasting impact on capacity to continuously respond to community issues.

Rad Resources

• The Center for Implementation Toolbox for Sustainability
• Program Sustainability Assessment Tool
• Long Term Success Tool
• Sustainability Planning Guide

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The American Evaluation Association is hosting Organizational Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building (OL-ECB) Topical Interest Group Week. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our OL-ECB TIG members. 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. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.