Arts and cultural leaders are always looking for the best ways to accomplish program objectives, understand the experiences of different stakeholders, and identify key indicators of success. Evaluation offers a set of tools and processes for asking and answering these critical questions. It also helps you demonstrate your success and provide critical and timely information to funders and other key stakeholders.
Building Evaluation Capacity is taught by:
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Hallie Preskill, Ph.D.
Claremont Graduate University -
Annabel Jackson, MBA
Annabel Jackson Associates
Key Learning
Building Evaluation Capacity is a two-day seminar that introduces a strategic framework for designing evaluation to meet your unique needs. You learn how evaluation helps you predict and meet future challenges, integrate ideas from across your organization, and improve relationships with key stakeholders. By the end of the seminar, you will be able to:
- Identify critical evaluative questions for your organization
- Design and conduct evaluation in practical, creative ways
- Use results effectively within your organization and with funders
- Understand how findings can be used for decision-making and action
Seminar Sessions
Day One
Session 1: The Goals of Evaluation
Through interactive exercises, you explore your organizational goals and those of your colleagues, and discuss the contribution that evaluation can make to achieving those goals.
Session 2: Systematic Evaluation
In this session, you work to define evaluation, and explore the reasons why evaluation is often neglected. The faculty introduce a framework for systematic evaluation that meets the unique needs of arts and cultural organizations.
Session 3: Organizational Learning and Evaluation
You dig further into the logic of evaluation, and explore the connection between evaluation and a learning organization. Discussion and team-based exercises help you identify your critical evaluative questions.
Session 4: Defining an Evaluation Plan
Building on the earlier sessions, you define an overall process for highly-effective evaluation, and outline your own evaluation plan.
Day Two
Session 1: Focusing an Evaluation
The faculty lead a class discussion that digs deeply into the political nature of evaluation in recent years. You then use this context to focus your own evaluation efforts on a clear purpose and set of stakeholders.
Session 2: Designing and Implementing an Evaluation
You discuss and evaluate data collection methods, with additional exploration of how to design effective surveys (given how often surveys are used in the arts and culture sector).
Session 3: Survey Design, Data Collection, and Analysis
The discussion of survey designs continues in this session. A lecture and team-based activities are used to explore data analysis approaches.
Session 4: Reporting Evaluation Findings
Effective evaluation helps create a learning organization and helps strengthen relationships with stakeholders. You wrap up this two-day seminar by exploring various communicating and reporting strategies, and develop a reporting plan for your organization's evaluation.
Recommended Team
Creating and implementing an evaluation strategy requires senior-level leadership, and expertise from across an arts or cultural organization. We strongly recommend a team of three or more people; large organizations should consider sending larger teams. In selecting your team, it will be helpful to include:
- Your senior-level program and management leadership
- Senior-level development, outreach, marketing, and program staff who are close to stakeholder experiences, interests, and concerns
- Staff currently involved with evaluation efforts
Board members are welcome, but are not required for this seminar, given its focus on internal processes. We recommend that board members only attend if invited by staff leadership, and if they are currently involved in internal decisions on evaluation.
