demystifying evaluation

Beach House In Focus Impact

5 Tips for Communicating Your Impact

Identifying and showcasing the content that matters most is crucial for effective communication in your organization. This blog post provides five tips to communicate your organization’s impact as part of your communication strategy. Tip #1: Know Your Audience Before drafting an impact report or email campaign, make sure you know your audience. Here are some […]

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three plants

6 Benefits of Evaluation

Evaluation is a powerful tool for nonprofit organizations. In fact, evaluation is the “secret sauce” that differentiates organizations that thrive versus those that only survive. Additionally, evaluation can be a catalyst for positive change. For example, REC worked with a client for three years. At first, there were some reservations about data and using evaluation.

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Tug of War Program Evaluation

Program Evaluation: Nonprofits’ Needs Versus Donor’s Requests, Part 2

As discussed in Part 1, there are often differences in the ways that donors view program evaluation when compared to how nonprofits wish to use evaluation (Zinn, 2017). Donors view evaluation as an accountability measure and prefer evaluations that are rigorous, conducted by third-party experts, and focus on long-term outcomes (York, 2005). However, nonprofits prefer

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One Dollar Bill Notes

Program Evaluation: Nonprofits’ Needs Versus Donor’s Requests, Part 1

Why do you evaluate your programs? To provide accountability to your donors? To measure what you’re doing right or wrong? To gain access to more funding? Well, if you work for a nonprofit organization, you probably identified with several of these goals. However, your reasons for conducting a program evaluation may differ dramatically from that

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Popcorn machine and bag full of popcorn

What is Quantitative and Qualitative Data?

Two Types of Data When people discuss data, they typically describe it as either quantitative or qualitative. Yet, what is quantitative data? What is qualitative data? How are these two types of data different? Is one type of data better to use than the other? Why should this topic matter to purpose-driven organizations? This blog

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