Program Evaluation
Evaluations should be useful to the people that matter the most: on the ground staff and the people and communities they serve. My goal is to empower you and your team to become evaluative thinkers who strategically use data to inform programmatic improvements, secure funding, and grow. I offer a range of program evaluation services for mission-driven organizations, as well as expertly facilitated trainings using the I do - we do - you do model to unlock the little evaluator inside everyone; yes, even you.
Menu of Services
Evaluation Fundamentals
The strongest foundation for program evaluation starts with your mission, vision, and values, logic model, theory of change, and strategic plan. Don’t have those in place? Have them, but only because your grant application required it?Could they use some work? Writing about ourselves and our work is challenging. Luckily, you’ve found me I’d be happy to support you.
Tool Design
Designing the perfect survey or interview guide can take time and effort away from your other responsibilities. We don’t need to be experts in everything. Allow me to step in to create the data collection tools you need to measure your outcomes and goals. With dynamic training, you and your staff will be equipped with the skills necessary to implement and collect your own data with ease.
Reporting
My worst nightmare is a long evaluation report that sits on a shelf collecting dust, goes unread in your inbox forever, or only helps the funder, not you and your team. You provide the data, I provide the report. My writing style is compelling and easy to understand, harnessing my years of experience supporting communications, marketing, and development teams.
For the Small Business Owner
Data is just information. In that case, you’ve got data… each website, app, and platform you use comes with a data dashboard. You’ve asked clients for feedback in-person, via email, and maybe even a survey or two. You have the information, but what do you do with it? That’s where I come in! Let’s harness your data and make it work for you. I’ll help you ask the right questions to get the data to tell us its stories. Working together to ask the right questions on a quarterly or bi-yearly basis we’ll turn you into a powerful data wizard, using what you already have to improve & grow. After all, what’s the point of having big goals if you aren’t measuring accomplishing them?
Capacity Building
I have supported 200+ nonprofits and foundations through dynamic, customized training resulting in the organizations I support improving their data culture and quality. Learn more about my facilitation, training, and capacity building services.
Data Analysis
You’ve collected your data, but you need someone with the training and expertise to make sense of it. No formal reports here! All you need is someone to make sense of all these spreadsheets, standard (and unhelpful) Google Forms, or SurveyMonkey canned results. You’ve come to the right place! Send us your data securely, and we will clean it up, run some fancy stats, and send it back to you with bulleted, high-level insights in a beautifully formatted document of your choice.
What people are saying
“Dara is what everyone looks for in a colleague. She's a positive force, responsive and truly cares about the work she is doing and the people it touches. Give Dara a project, and you can be certain that it will get done on time, under budget and be of the highest quality.”
— Nancy Levesque, Communications Director
"Dara is an incredibly skilled evaluator and data storyteller. Though I have met a lot of evaluators over my career, I think that Dara has unique strengths in interdisciplinary collaboration, capacity building and community engagement, all which make her evaluation work more meaningful and actionable for stakeholders."
— Alicia Vooris, Social Science Analyst
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