In the last couple of years, I have focused my main business, FlowStream Management, on evaluating grant projects. I have found grant project evaluation to be so important, helpful to clients, and FUN!

First of all, we're not talking about evaluating proposals to decide which ones get funded. Instead, my quick definition of grant project evaluation is measuring your project's accomplishments.

You're asking two main questions in evaluation: 1) What did you do? and 2) What difference did it make? It's not enough to be organized and do everything you wrote in your grant proposal; it's also important that what you're doing is making a difference!

Here's an example: you run a research lab that will be hosting a summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. Maybe you are planning to include peer mentoring sessions, weekly meetings with graduate students, and a final symposium where students will present their work. So that's what you want to do. Now... what difference will it make? Well, you want the students to grow in their knowledge of your field. You want them to become more aware of career opportunities in research and to envision themselves in a research career. And then you want a lot of them to actually pursue a research career! Grant evaluation can help you measure all of these things.

First of all, evaluation can provide recommendations to keep your project on track. We call this formative evaluation. Let's say you have a three-year project. You can start evaluation a semester or year in - just to see what the data says about what you're doing and the difference it's making. 

This is a good time to pause and say: Don't be scared of evaluation results! In one of my first experiences with evaluation, I was "on the other side" of the table, managing a grant project. We had an upcoming meeting with our grant evaluator to go over their results. As the meeting drew near, I found myself feeling nervous like I was receiving a graded test or a tax audit. Yuck. But by the time the meeting was over, I realized the evaluator wanted the success of our project as much as I did!

Toward the end of your project, you can also use evaluation to make your project shine! If you've used the formative feedback discussed above to make your project successful, you will have done a lot of meaningful work and made a difference with your community. The evaluation performed at the end of your project (which we call summative evaluation) will provide data you definitely want to share! You can include these results in grant reports, conference presentations, press releases, and social media.  Then, fast forward a few months - this evaluation data will also be crucial in your next grant proposal! Reviewers love to see data showing the impact of your past projects.

If you have a grant project to evaluate, start by creating an evaluation plan. It's ok to start small. Here is an in-depth guide to Developing an Evaluation Plan, by Community Toolbox.

Once you're ready to plan data collection, I like the Data Collection Toolkit for Program Evaluation, by the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice. And don't worry, if you're not in public health, the tips in the toolkit can still apply in a variety of fields.

Good luck!

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Photo by Marília Castelli on Unsplash