Ideas on evaluating impact
Why measure impact ? Well , for starters , it can help you to learn from your experiences so you can do better next time . Documenting impact can also help you to monitor your progress towards goals , justify to funders why they should support your project financially and can even help participants to reflect on and cement their own learning . Evaluation need not be boring , either . Below we detail some ideas . Write your own set of items to monitor and draw upon your theory of change ( p23 ) to help you .
What are you evaluating ?
Number of participants that interacted with your activity
Number of sign-ups to newsletter / event
Opinion change on an issue
Enjoyment
Behaviour change
Evaluation idea
Print out x amount of postcards and hand out to each participant . Deduct the remaining postcards from total to work out total participants .
Ask participants to add their details to a spreadsheet ( ideally on a computer so you don ' t have to decipher handwriting ).
Ask participants their opinion before , and then again at the end . You could use a tally chart on a whiteboard , or tokens that participants place in boxes .
Smiley face stickers , for participants to stick on a board . Or a quote board for people to write their thoughts .
A pledge board , for people to write what action they will take on a postcard . You could take a picture of them with their postcard for social media , and then send it to them two weeks later as a reminder of their pledge . For someone in a position of power , their pledge would be captured in writing .
% reduction in food waste /% increase in energy efficiency /% increase in pupils walking to school ... etc
Measure the baseline number before the campaign and measure again afterwards . E . g ., for the baseline , you could : weigh food waste bins for one week to get an average ; request the energy bills of the school from the past 5 years to see the trend ; or survey how pupils get to school and the barriers and opportunities for change .
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