Over the past few years I’ve had several opportunities to teach evaluation. Most of my students have been people who manage programs or provide direct services in government or nonprofits. Often, evaluation is just one of many responsibilities they have in their work. I’m sure I’ve learned just as much as my students—including:
April 19, 2012 - 2:23pm
If you teach, lead workshops, or run group activities, you have probably asked participants to evaluate their experience. Here are a few tips to make that feedback truly useful:
April 17, 2012 - 7:30pm
With over 200 attendees and dozens of speakers, Minnesota Evaluation Studies Institute (MESI) 2012 was a stimulating, high quality conference for evaluators, students and anyone seeking more knowledge about the field. MESI provides a casual environment conducive to talking 1:1 with experts and sharing your own experience. I was pleased to meet a number of people who were not evaluators by trade, but there to learn about integrating evaluation in their own work.
April 6, 2012 - 10:14am
Improve Group Staff members Stacy Johnson, Jill Lipski Cain and Liz Radel Freeman recently posted on the American Evaluation Association (AEA) 365 Tip-A-Day email alerts. Their topic is the community mapping data gathering method. The AEA alerts highl
April 3, 2012 - 8:02pm
In honor of the upcoming Earth Day (April 22), the Improve Group’s Workplace Environment (WE) Committee is launching an initiative for the month of April called “Planting the Seeds of a Healthy Workplace.” Each week, WE Comm April 2, 2012 - 8:01pm
The Improve Group has recently been working with the national organization Nonprofits HR Solutions on collecting data for their 2012 Nonprofit Employment Trends Survey.
March 23, 2012 - 3:30am
Surveys are one of the Improve Group’s most frequently used evaluation tools, and for good reason they are great way to get feedback from a large group of people. Surveys are generally quite a cost-effective strategy, because after the initial design and launching of your survey, there’s usually minimal added cost for each survey response you receive. Additionally, surveys are so commonly used that most people are pretty comfortable sharing their insights through a survey administered online, on paper or on the phone.
March 23, 2012 - 3:29am
Two survey personal experiences I had recently point out some good – and bad – practices. You may have had similar experiences.
March 2, 2012 - 4:27pm
Do you do client surveys? If so, do you quickly smile at the positive responses but give a lot of consideration – maybe even a twinge of obsession – to any negative answers, like I do?
We recently closed our yearly client survey and already gathered to review results and think about implications for our work. We heard some wonderful feedback:
- Our clients rated us between excellent (83%) and good (17%) on being responsive to their needs
- Our clients also rated us very highly in timeliness, our ethical standards, and in working respectfully with other stakeholders.