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Section Four: Evaluating your public information activities
Internal evaluations should take place every week, not every six months or every year.
Always know the answer to the question, «What business are we in?»
Introduction
Section Four will briefly address three key questions:
We will discuss evaluative methods for voter education methods. We will also address the importance of learning from experience and communicating this information to relevant leadership, management, staff and volunteers. This section does not address financial evaluations and reporting.
4.1. Where did you start?
You started with a mission statement, objectives, and priorities. You decided who your audience was and the information important to communicate. Hopefully, you crafted measurable objectives for your overall efforts as well as for each activity. You also started with baseline information (qualitative and/or quantitative) describing the situation at the beginning of your activities.
4.2. Where did you plan and hope to go?
Based on your strategic objectives, you designed specific activities aimed to get information to specific audiences. Taking into account your knowledge of your audience you designed information packages and promoted them in different ways.
You probably provided some information to general public and targeted other efforts to a particular group. Some efforts were no doubt more successful than others. Review the worksheets you completed in Sections Two and Three.
4.3. Did you get there? evaluation demystified
Funding organizations need to justify the expenditure made on your organization and they need your help.
Remember that the best program becomes the worst in the eyes of donors if your financial records are a mess!
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Evaluation is nothing more than a tool to help you understand if you arrived where you set out to go. That said, it is not simple to quantify the results of democratic development activities. Do your best to decide what works and then eliminate activities that were not effective, cost too much or failed altogether.
Sustainability is important to donors. «Replicability» is also important. Replicability means that your model of activities can be relevant elsewhere in the country or even the world. Other donors don't have to spend money «reinventing the wheel». They can learn from your experiences. Trainers can be trained to carry out the same work and the need for «consultants», international organizations, and other donors decreases. In order to know whether your model is successful, you need to evaluate to what extent you achieved your objectives.
4.3.1 Sustainability (Are you on the road to financial self reliance?)
We began the handbook suggesting you may want to think of your public association as a business that needs to sustain itself financially. We also discussed different methods, products and services that may help you accomplish this. A few questions may help you think through to what extent your organization embraced some of these new principles:
 Do you have the resources to carry forward your efforts in the future?
Did you raise funds? From new sources?
Did you find more volunteers?
Did you develop partnerships with the commercial sector? donors? sponsors?
Did you conduct joint programs with other NGOs?
Did you get office space or other essential resources donated?
Did you generate enough positive publicity to build the credibility and reputation of your organization?
4.3.2 Replicability (Can your methods be used by similar organizations?)
You probably have a gut feeling about your success in different activities. This is a good start, but your intuition will need to be backed up by data and anecdotes. Donors like to receive a combination of each. Pictures and sample materials always speak more than a 500-page «report» on your activities. Baseline information is very useful if you can obtain it. Public opinion surveys or reliable statistics about your target audience prior to the beginning of your activities are a donor's dream. This, of course, assumes you can then compare this to a similar high quality source of data some time after your activities have begun (or ended).
Do not make the mistake of saying «the event happened, people attended, so therefore we were successful».
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Your audience could have use your publication as fire kindling, slept through your presentation, or met a date at your festival and left immediately.
Evaluative questions to ask are: what did people do with the information? Did they act on it as we hoped and expected?
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You need to decide if you want to try the same road again or try another one. If you like the road you chose, then you need to know why, say why, the market it. This information may be useful to other struggling organizations around the world. This is the concept replicability.
4.3.2.a A few ways to assess if your activities made an impact
(i) Good feedback from your general audience - voters and people involved in the electoral process, including:
Positive letters
Positive evaluation questionnaires
High voter turn out
Increased club membership
Increased requests for your members to address audiences
Increased requests for training
Increased calls for information
Increased requests for assistance (people in electoral process)
(ii) Good feedback from your targeted audience - specific youth groups, unemployed, women, etc.
Positive trends in quantitative or qualitative data: voter turn out, attitudes
Decreased number of spoiled ballots
(iii) High number of positive news stories about your activities
(iv) Legislation positively affected by organizational input
(v) High number of community initiatives inspired by the organization
(vi) Targeted number of new clubs achieved
The success of your evaluation depends on the quality of the objectives you set in the beginning of your efforts. If you set unrealistic objectives that you don't meet, then an evaluator may consider your efforts negatively, even if activity evaluation forms after each event reported excellent impressions.
In your eagerness to get funds, don't over promise! Better to say you will do half of what you know is possible and then surprise them with twice the value for their money!
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Worksheet 4.0
Evaluate your organization AND your activities
Strengths of your organization: list three
1.
2.
3.
Weaknesses of your organization: list three
1.
2.
3.
Most successful activities: list two
1.
2.
Least successful activities: list two
1.
2.
How do you decide what is most successful? List «indicators» you use.
1.
2.
3.
How many people benefited from your work?
How many names and phone number could you give an independent evaluator?
How many people did you expect would benefit?
Which objectives need revision?
1.
2.
What lessons did you learn that should be communicated to other people trying to carry out voter information programs?
1.
2.
Questions for Discussion
Which activities are easiest to measure with numbers? Which activities will need to be evaluated qualitatively?
What public opinion research data is available? Are general statistics available and relevant to your activities?
Will your activities lead to financial independence or will you always need to rely on donations and sponsorships?
What is the difference between «audience» impressions of your work and a formal evaluation based on your organization's objectives?
If asked «where did you plan to go?» with your activities could you answer clearly? What would you say?
What «success indicators» are most important for your evaluation?
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