Evaluation Sourcebook (.pdf) - School of Natural Resources and ...

INTRODUCTION OBJECTIVES THREATS ASSETS STRATEGIESEVALUATION: WHAT IS IT AND WHY DO IT?Evaluation is a broad set of activities that includes:• Goal setting and strategic planning: Developing a clear picture of what you aretrying to achieve and how you plan to affect the system to get there.• Asking questions: Identifying what you need to know to assess progress, testuncertainties and inform decisions.• Information gathering: Obtaining information or data to answer to your questions.• Adaptive management: Linking new information back to decision-making toincrease project effectiveness.Evaluation helps projects face one of their greatest challenges: having a positive impact oncomplex ecological and social systems with limited resources. Evaluation can increase yourability to make decisions, be effective and obtain support.THE BENEFITS OF EVALUATION• Maximize the impact of limited resources. Insights gained through evaluation enable youto identify the strengths and weaknesses of your approach and adjust accordingly: whichaspects of your project work, which don’t, and why?• View your project’s role within a complex system. Diverse activities and circumstances –from natural disturbances to political cycles – are affecting the status of natural resources, theeconomy, and the community. Evaluation helps you make sense of this complexity.• Improve group dynamics and processes. By facilitating dialogue among people andorganizations involved in the project, evaluation activities can help build a sharedunderstanding of the project, leading to clearer task assignments and greater accountability.• Build support. Being able to demonstrate success can promote support from community andpolitical officials and increase funding.• Deal with uncertainty and change. Knowledge gained through evaluation allows foradaptive management – learning from experience and adjusting activities accordingly.Evaluation Sourcebook 3