ACET, Inc. Blog

As my one-year anniversary with ACET rapidly approaches, I have been reflecting on what I have learned through my work. The three most important things I have learned through my responsibilities as an Evaluation Specialist involved the importance of communicating through writing, being open to new challenges, and utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data.

• The importance of communicating through writing. One of my largest surprises here at ACET was the amount of time dedicated to communicating through writing. Whether it is a Request For Proposal (RFP) application, a client report, or email communication, ACET staff (including myself!) spend a great deal of time writing. I learned that that in order to write successfully, a great deal of time, hard-work, and editing is required. That hard work often results in ACET’s reports being succinct, clear, and thorough.
• Being open to new challenges. Evaluation is often not a repetitive field where staff perform the same task everyday. It takes a great deal of time for evaluators to learn a new program and tailor an evaluation that fits client’s needs. Evaluation processes often take a great deal of critical thinking and this may challenge staff. I’ve learned that to be successful in the field, I need to embrace these challenges to produce quality evaluations.
• Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data. Many of ACET’s evaluations utilize both quantitative (e.g., numerical survey items) and qualitative (e.g., open-ended survey items or interviews) data to measure outcomes. Using both types of data helps triangulate evaluation findings. I learned that when close-ended survey findings are intertwined with open-ended responses, a clearer picture of program effectiveness occurs. Using both types of data also helps to further explain the findings. For example, if 80% of group A “Strongly agreed” to question 1, their open-ended responses to question 2 may explain why they “Strongly agreed” to question 1.

If you learned any lessons while working at your organization, please share!

Dan

ACET is pleased to introduce our newest Graduate Research Assistant, Kirsten Anderson. Kirsten is a Master’s student in the Evaluation Studies Program at the University of Minnesota. She is a recent transplant to the Twin Cities by way of San Diego, California; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Cairo, Egypt; and Salt Lake City, Utah. In her free time Kirsten loves to hike, bike, read, write, explore new places, making things, and gardening.

Before moving to the Twin Cities, Kirsten worked on several evaluation projects for K-12 education and teacher education programs with an urban school district as well as working in the research department of a large health care organization. Since beginning her graduate studies, Kirsten has worked on evaluation and action research projects with community organizations in north Minneapolis as well as with departments within the University of Minnesota. Her research interests and evaluation style center on making evaluation accessible, inclusive, interesting, and empowering for the broader Twin Cities and global community. Her master’s thesis, along those lines, will focus on tracking evaluation capacity building at the Neighborhood House in St. Paul.

Kirsten A.

ACET staff would like you to know about two new grant opportunities in the realms of health care and education.

First, Lowe’s Charitable and Educational Foundation’s Toolbox for Education program is offering awards between $2,000 and $5,000 for K-12 public school improvement projects. These awards are geared towards helping schools or nonprofit parent groups (with 501(c)(3) status) improve or build up the facilities (outdoor and indoor) of a school, such as gardens, playgrounds, student art exhibits, tutoring centers, and more. Projects encouraging community spirit and parent involvement are especially encouraged. The deadline for requests is October 12, 2012. Interested parties can get more information at the Toolbox for Education web site.

The second opportunity comes from the Health Impact Project, who have announced grants for organizations that seek to conduct health impact assessments, or HIAs. Up to 5 demonstration projects, designed to inform tribal, state, or federal policy decisions, will be awarded up to $75,000 and must be completed within 18 months. Preference will be given to projects that do not deal with urban land use. In addition to these, the Health Impact Project will be funding up to three more demonstration projects in the state of Minnesota in cooperation of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation. The Health Impact Project will also be funding up to 3 program grants for organizations that have performed at least 1 previous HIA. These grants will cover at least 2 HIAs, will be rewarded in amounts up to $250,000, and must be completed within 24 months. Organizations seeking program grant funds will be asked to supply a minimum of $100,000 in matching funds, either through outside funding sources or in-kind contributions of staff time.

Webinars will be hosted for potential applicants on August 1, August 7, and August 15, 2012. Proposals must be submitted online by September 28, 2012. For more information, please see the Health Impact Project’s Funding Opportunities page.

ACET Staff

ACET is excited to announce that evaluators Joseph Curiel and Kirsten Rewey have been accepted to present findings at three multi-paper sessions at the 2012 American Evaluation Association’s Annual Conference held this October in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Entitled “Evaluation in Complex Ecologies: Relationships, Responsibilities, Relevance,” Joseph and Kirsten will be joining thousands of attendees for a week of workshops, networking, and capacity building.

On Thursday, October 25, Kirsten Rewey will be a part of the multi-paper session “Evaluating Programs Targeted for Populations with Disabilities.” Kirsten’s paper, entitled “Evaluating an Educational Support Program for Those Who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing: Unique Needs” explores the design, implementation, and training for a group of stakeholders including deaf, hard of hearing, hearing, and multilingual individuals.

On Friday, October 26, Joseph Curiel will be chairing “The Complexity of Multi-Site Evaluations: Lessons Learned from the Evaluation of a College Access Program” alongside colleagues from the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Office of Higher Education. The session will explore the challenges encountered and solutions devised as part of the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) project.

On Saturday, October 27, Kirsten will again be presenting, this time as part of the multi-paper session “Building Evaluation Capacity to Support Short and Long-term Organization Impact.” Kirsten’s presentation, “Managing the Impact of Staff Turnover on Evaluation Capacity and Quality,” includes strategies for building staff capacity for evaluations, even in the face of changing staff makeup.

We are very proud of our evaluators and invite you to attend their sessions.

ACET Staff

In a previous blog post, I introduced the topic of Executive Summaries as well as a brief look at the keys to an effective summary. In this post, I want to identify the key components of the structure and flow of a summary.

Heading: The heading, or title, of your Executive Summary should be brief but still descriptive. It should communicate its function to its readers immediately.

First Paragraph: Introduce your client organization, its source of funding, the name of the program, its goals, and its target population.

Second Paragraph: Describe the program and evaluation specifics. This is a good place to include historical information about the project if relevant. Explain how the program was evaluated, the number of individuals who participated, to what extent, and how those contributions were measured.

Third Paragraph: Use your third paragraph to address impact statements. Describe the key findings for each evaluation goal previously identified.

Fourth Paragraph: Describe the strengths and barriers, or successes and challenges, encountered in the evaluation. This is also a good place to explore any other notable or unintended outcomes experienced.

Final Paragraph: This paragraph will serve as your conclusion. Use this paragraph to make recommendations or suggest next steps.

Beyond content, design is also a factor in delivering information in a clear and uncluttered way. If your Executive Summary consists of pages and pages of paragraphs, it is likely exceeding the target length of 1 to 2 pages and/or has been cut and pasted in large pieces from its original report. Keep in mind that the purpose of the Executive Summary is to succinctly report the most important aspects of an evaluation report to stakeholders, not simply to produce an abridged version of the original report. Try using visually distinct headers to make the layout of the information clear (similar to the above bold words). Also, to only report the most important information, leave out charts, graphs, and tables in the construction of your Executive Summary; readers can find these components in the full report if they want further information.

Good luck.

Stella