My name is Alexey Kuzmin and I am the Director of the Process Consulting Company based in Moscow, Russia (since 1992). We specialize in program evaluation and evaluation related services such as evaluation training; design and implementation of monitoring and evaluation systems. Often clients invite us to participate in program design.
Lesson Learned: Values influence program design to a great extent, but rarely become an explicit part of program description.
Cool trick: Suggest your clients to make program values an explicit part of their program design. It will stimulate an in-depth and important discussion among the key stakeholders.
Hot Tips: Remember that if you decide to do so, you need to be ready to:
- Raise stakeholders’ awareness of role and importance of values in program design.
- Help develop and describe program values.
- Explore both organizational and social values.
- Be able to identify real values as opposed to declared values.
- Consider multiple value perspectives and cultural context.
- Respond to values-related evaluation questions.
Rad Resources:
- Whitman’s article in the Nonprofit Management & Leadership, sheds light those social values that underpin philanthropic foundations.
- My colleague (Irina Efremova-Garth) and I reported on our experiences in including values in program design at the AEA15 conference. Our slides are available via the AEA Public eLibrary.
The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Program Design TIG Week with our colleagues in the Program Design Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our Program Design 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.