Nonprofit Evaluation for Learning

Dates: February 11-12, 2025

Meets: Tu and Wed from 9:00 AM to 12 N

Location: ONLINE - Live

COURSE: $115.00

There are still openings remaining at this time.

Description
Fees
Location
Sessions

Course Description

Are you interested in understanding what makes your program or project more effective using equitable evaluation approaches? Are you being asked to report on your program's outcome or impact to the community, your board, or funders? Do you want to ensure you are not overburdened with data collection, analysis, and reporting? Attend this virtual two-day, 6-hour workshop to learn some tips and tricks to integrate evaluation activities into your programs from the start or develop processes that work once the program is started.

Using a program that you will bring with you (even just in your head), we will make theories of change and logic models for your programs, turn those into measurement plans with innovative methods, practice analyzing different types of data, and plan for how to report findings to different audiences. I will show you qualitative (stories, pictures, drawings, etc) and quantitative (numbers) data collection techniques and analysis. You will walk away with key tips to designing surveys, facilitating focus groups, conducting interviews, using photovoice, and other fun techniques. The statistics required for analysis in this workshop will not go beyond counts or frequencies and averages (i.e., no inferential statistics). We will see how to set up excel sheets, develop pivot tables, and look at the basics of graphing in excel. This information, along with identifying key audiences will flow into ways of reporting that do not require you to write a 45-page document.

Let's talk about the "no staple" rule, can we? If it needs a staple, it is too long for most people to read. We will end the time with talking about how to budget for evaluations you do yourself and those you hire externally. At the end of this workshop, you will have a plan to evaluate your program, some tools to do that with or integrate into your other documentation, and a plan for how to analyze that data going forward.

Course Level: Beginner

Objectives:

Develop a theory of change and logic model for their program and will understand how these tools influence programming and evaluation.
Gain greater understanding of multiple qualitative and quantitative data collection methods, instruments, and the implications for each on analysis and final results.
Understand how to develop an evaluation plan based on audience.
Understand how to develop a measurement plan as well as identifying potential tools for data collection.
Learn common analysis techniques for qualitative and quantitative data.
Understand common reporting practices for different audiences.

Instructor

Liz Delaney, MSW

Liz fell into philanthropy after working as a Chemistry and Physics teacher in middle and high school, while getting her master's in social work at Grand Valley State University. She was offered a graduate assistant position at the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University (the Johnson Center) as an evaluator. After completing her MSW, she continued to work at the Johnson Center. Throughout the years, she has worked with many foundation and nonprofit clients to support with strategy development, evaluation and learning development and implementation, and capacity building. She has worked as a Learning Officer and Senior Learning Officer at two foundations and has run her own consulting firm for a total of three years. She has been consulting with philanthropy since 2011.

In her spare time, she is getting ready to defend her dissertation proposal, which is focused on program officers’ use of evaluation and learning in the grantmaking process. She loves spending time with her five dogs and traveling (not with all the dogs).

Location

Online via Zoom. You will receive the link to the Zoom meeting in an email three days before your event.

Special Accommodations

Please contact our office regarding any accommodations you may need prior to attending our program(s). We will work with you to ensure your needs are met. You may email us at learn@gvsu.edu, or call us at (616) 331-7180.

To view our policies, please visit: www.gvsu.edu/learn/policies

Grand Valley State University School of Social Work, an accredited social work education program, is authorized by Administrative Rule 338.2963 to award Michigan social work continuing education contact hours.