High-Performance Partnerships - National Academy of Public ...

RESULTS
chapter four
Healthy Families has involved the College of William and
Mary to evaluate the program from its initial planning
phase. We knew that every dollar allocated to evaluation
would be one less dollar spent on services to families.
We also knew that the organization’s future
depended on our ability to secure ongoing funding that
would only be available if we had documented results.
During the first four years, Healthy Families spent
approximately $100,000 on evaluation. It was well
worth the investment. Today, the partnership receives
more than $2.7 million in city funding, $1 million a year
in donations and in-kind and redirected resources from
community partners, and approximately $850,000 in federal
reimbursements. We believe that all of these
resources are a direct result of the investment made in
conducting a strong evaluation and our ongoing commitment
to collect qualitative and quantitative information.
Debbie Russell, Healthy Families Partnership (Hampton)
its successes. Investing in an evaluation expert
is money well spent, and there are several
options to do this. A central entity that routinely
collects community information may be
willing to provide data analysis. Examples
include a university, district planning commission,
foundation, or national organization
adept at research and evaluation. Another
option is to build evaluation costs into a partnership’s
initial budget.
4. Reward stakeholders for providing accurate
and timely data.
Data come at a cost. A partnership must not
be afraid to incentivize positive behavior that
contributes to its overall effectiveness. This
includes accurate and timely data collection
and reporting.
THE COST OF MEASURING RESULTS
Data collection can be very expensive, and
many initiatives do not have vast resources.
Yet the effectiveness of the entire effort may be
questioned without adequate evaluation. The
partnership faces a dilemma: deliver more
units of service or reduce the number to evaluate
the effectiveness of those that are.
The Strategies
First and foremost, the design lab participants
recommend that other partnerships “just do
it.” Continuing to support an unproductive
program is unwise. Neither the public nor
nonprofit sector has such an abundance of
resources to permit prolonged inefficiency.
Accountability to taxpayers, donors, and other
funders requires an effective evaluation
process. Given limited resources, how can a
cross-sector partnership evaluate program
effectiveness and communicate the results?
1. Get a partner with evaluation capability.
Partnerships generally include service delivery
agencies. These are essential, but so is program
evaluation. Partnerships can recruit a
member with this evaluative capability, such as
a university, foundation, or research organization.
This is similar to a strategy offered for
the prior challenge.
2. Develop the capacity for self-evaluation.
An internal audit may not be as universally
accepted as an independent evaluation, but it
provides the opportunity to make midcourse
adjustments. It is not critical for the partnership
to have an optimal evaluation methodology,but
it is essential that an evaluative component
exists from the outset.
3. Just do it.
Resources may generally be limited but, again,
a partnership should fund program evaluation
in its initial budget. Showing early results
could help to secure second phase funding or
constituent support, making this line item a
worthwhile expenditure. Further, midcourse
corrections without supporting data would be
hazardous at best.
72 Powering the Future: High-Performance Partnerships