Evaluation is a pathway to determine what results you are achieving. As a nonprofit, your organization belongs to the community at large. You have a responsibility to ensure your organization is making a difference, and you want to hold the organization accountable to achieving results on behalf of the community. Evaluation can help you reflect on your success and avoid repeating missteps.
Through the Evaluate stage, you will track and assess progress against your strategic plan. Your evaluation plan does not need to be complicated. Common first steps include seeking participant or client feedback and tracking a few key data points related to your strategic plan. If your nonprofit has never done evaluation work before, your strategic plan can serve as your first evaluation project. You can do this by simply outlining monitoring actions directly in the strategic plan. Create a system for tracking from the beginning to avoid data collection challenges later.
Decide what is feasible for your organization when monitoring, evaluating, and learning from your strategic plan. Smaller organizations may create a simple plan that monitors progress annually. If you have more capacity, you may consider creating a dashboard that is updated regularly to track measurable indicators for each strategic priority. Larger nonprofits may have resources available to engage an outside evaluation expert to help create a customized evaluation plan and data collection tools.
Tracking your progress will help your nonprofit tell its story to current and future beneficiaries, partners, and supporters. Remember there is value in measurable indicators (quantitative) and more descriptive data like feelings or opinions (qualitative). Communicating your progress can nurture relationships with staff, board, volunteers, funders, and others who care about your mission. From reports to infographics to community gatherings, consider what methods of communication and ideal frequency reflect your organization’s values and culture.