Show Grantmakers Why Your Work is Worth Funding
How do you know if your programs really work? That’s one of the most critical questions your grant proposals need to answer — and why every proposal needs to include an evaluation plan. This section of a grant needs to answer “how do you know if your program works,” and “what data do you have to show your impact?” Before you start writing and submitting any grants, make sure you have a plan for how you’ll evaluate your work.
Why You Need an Evaluation Plan
Funders want to see the data that proves your programs have their intended impact, so they know if your organization is a good way for them to invest in long-term social change. So far in your grant proposal, you’ve shared why your work matters (your statement of need) and how you will have an impact (your goals and objectives). Your evaluation plan is where you prove your programs work the way you say they will, and should include:
What specific data will be collected, and the tools you will use to collect it.
Who will collect, analyze, and interpret the data.
How the data will be measured and evaluated.
What metrics you will use to determine progress towards your goals and objectives
How you will know if you are successful.
If you’re a newer nonprofit, focus on identifying what data can gather and track, the tools you use, and who on your team will do this work.
Read More: How to Write a Grant Proposal Need Statement That Gets Funded
How to Write Your Evaluation Plan
Just like your goals and objectives, your evaluation plan cannot be written in a silo. It isn’t something a grant writer can — or should — create without significant input from everyone involved in your work. Keep in mind that your evaluation plan is not something you create just for grant proposals. It’s an important tool for your programs team, the board of directors, and everyone else involved in making sure your work really works. As you create or revisit your evaluation plan, consider:
What activities do you complete each year?
How many constituents do you serve, and what are their demographics?
What changes can you measure as a result of your programs?
What tools can you use to measure these changes?
For instance, a mentoring program for underserved youth could track the number of students they reach and their demographics, the number of volunteers and how many hours they committed and students’ grades and attendance throughout the year. These can be measured and reported on using common tools such as pre-and post-surveys, interviews, and more, and our mentoring program could report on their work by:
Conducting pre- and post-surveys at the start and end of each semester and asking students to self-report on their engagement with the program and plans for the future.
Measuring the change in students’ academic performance and attendance.
Tracking how students perform compared to their peers overall and their own individual process.
As your organization grows your evaluation will evolve. Many nonprofits ultimately end up seeking the support of a third-party expert to help them refine their evaluation, but it’s alright if that project is years away. What matters is that you have a plan - no matter how simple - to track the result of your work and report on it to funders.
Read More: How to Keep Your Best Donors from Forgetting About Your Work During the Coronavirus Pandemic
Examples of Grant Proposal Evaluations
Let’s take a look at the following sample evaluation for our fictional educational organization that pairs retired teachers with at-risk students for mentoring and college readiness.
Our organization is committed to engaging in thorough program-assessment practices and analyzes a robust amount of each year for its five programs. We collect data from constituents in order to track program efficacy, sustainability, diversity, and quality. A variety of tools are employed in these efforts: post-program assessments, add-on questionnaires, pre-program surveys, post-event feedback forms, and volunteer observation forms.
Our largest collection of data comes from post-program surveys. We analyze program data and generate reports on an annual basis. Information contained in these reports is used to refine, improve, and strengthen our work by identifying areas of strength and opportunities for evolution and improvement.
At first glance, this seems thorough, but as you read more closely you can see it does not have specifics about what or how they are measuring, or how reporting will be used. What if instead, it looked like this?
Our organization expects that as a result of our work, our students will have increased their attendance and academic achievement, and be better prepared to pursue post-secondary education.
To evaluate our work, we survey the engagement, activation, and confidence of students. Students are surveyed at the start and end of each semester using a short 10-question standardized assessment that allows us to track their engagement with our work, progress towards their goals, and their goals for the next semester or year.
Additionally, our teacher mentors track students’ attendance and academic performance at the start and end of each quarter in order to evaluate both individuals’ qualitative progress towards their goals as well as the impact of our work overall.
Our programs team and board of directors evaluate the surveys and academic/attendance reports quarterly to ensure that we are on track to meet our goals. We expect 90% of students will have increased engagement with their mentor and schoolwork, 80% will have a plan for how to complete their college applications; 75% will have increased their grades, and 785% will have increased their attendance.
You can see that laying out concrete illustrations of what you are measuring, how you are measuring, and who is responsible for conducting and analyzing reports strengthens your evaluation section greatly.
Ultimately, your evaluation plan needs to clearly outline how you monitor, measure, and report on your work. Funders are essentially asking “is your program a good investment for our monetary resources” and asking you what you will measure, how you will measure it, and how you will ensure your program is working. No matter the strength of your writing, the importance of your programs, or passion for your mission, if you do not have a clear evaluation plan your proposal will likely not be funded.
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