Building Evaluation Capacity Within a Large NGO the highs and the lows Presented by Andrew Anderson,

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Building Evaluation Capacity Within a Large
NGO- the highs and the lowsPresented by
Andrew Anderson, Senior Manager Research and
Evaluation
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The Benevolent Society

• Provides support to more than 16,000 children and
  adults each year
• More than 800 staff and 900 volunteers
• 82 programs across 42 locations in NSW and
  Queensland
• Revenue in 2008 expected to be 54m

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Why do NGOs evaluate?

• Accountability to funders, investors and clients
• Improve our services do we do what we say we
  do?
• Demonstrate our effectiveness in a competitive
  environment
• Fill the evidence gap

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Social Policy and Research
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In the beginningour logframe
COMMUNITIES ARE RICH IN CULTURAL RECREATIONAL
ACTIVITIES
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The journey

• 3 Year Strategic Planning process (2006 09)
• Strategy 1 Create and deliver leading edge
  Programs and services
• Rigorous evaluation of what we do (service by
  service and as an organisation)

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Where did we start?

• STEP 1 Employed resources
• STEP 2 - Piloted an approach
• Program Logic
• Outcome measures
• Staff training
• 2 years in the making
• And in the meantime.

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The Highs client satisfaction
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The Highs Brighter Futures

• Building on whats already being collected
• Feeding back data to staff and building into
  reporting systems
• Using our data for advocacy
• e.g. Wood Inquiry

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The Challenges

• Spreading our resources too thinlycant do
  everything
• Some services left behind
• Time lag in reporting resultsstaff losing
  interest
• Limited consistency in data collected across
  serviceslimited info about progress against
  logframe
• Limited ownership of evaluation amongst staff and
  confusion about roles and responsibilities

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A brave new world

• A consistent approach to evaluation across our
  services
• A common language
• Clear roles and responsibilities shared
  ownership
• Regular reporting
• Common measures which tell us how we are
  performing against our organisational purpose

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How will we do it?

• Build on work done to date
• Services identify minimum number of outcomes from
  the logframe - some consistent outcomes across
  services
• Suite of approved tools to measure outcomes
• Training and capacity building of staff data
  collection at local level and evaluation
  champions
• Analysis and reporting framework in place

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Some parting messages

• Evaluation capacity building takes time!
• Dont reinvent the wheel learn from other NGOs
• Lets work together on building the evidence base
• We cant do everything but its worth doing it
  well
• Advocate for increased funding for evaluation
• Investment in evaluation is worthwhile!

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Contact

• Andrew Anderson
• andrewa_at_bensoc.org.au
• Tel. [phone]