The Latest

Evaluation Moments: Sparking a Legacy of Supporting Positive Change Through a Mindful Evaluation Practice

We all have moments when we ask ourselves a lot questions about what we're achieving. We wonder how and if the contributions we make individually and collectively are being valued or if they're considered insignificant. Are the resources we committed to produce some sort of change are the right resources? Are we really producing evidence and results that will establish a legacy of positive change? And hey, maybe it’s as simple as “why the heck are we doing this in the first place?”

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Evaluation: Stop, Listen, and Change

Evaluation takes courage and the willingness to change. When everything seems to be going well, it is especially important to take the time to reflect, to ask the tough questions and to be willing to hear inconvenient answers. What if the work you are doing is popular but not achieving its intended outcomes? What if you learn that the good work you are doing is actually increasing vulnerability and stigma for the people it’s intended to help?

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Why You Should Always Share Your Results

The part of the community change process that gets dropped most often is all that comes after the work is done. We host an event and then don’t do the debrief. We coordinate a year-long community of practice but don’t capture the way the meetings have impacted people. We convene neighbours for a community gathering and work day but don’t share how we did it and why people came.

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Rethinking How We Evaluate and Use Data

Everyone, regardless of whether you consider yourself an evaluator or not, uses metrics. We track our finances, look at gas mileage and so much more. In a community change context, we often find ways to track the performance of things like marketing and communications, program delivery, and budgeting. Read More

Outcome Harvesting: Principles, Steps, and Evaluation Applications

All throughout 2018 and into 2019, the Tamarack Institute has seen a large spike in interest in our Evaluation resources. This trend towards evaluating community change efforts is an encouraging one – it represents a move beyond programmatic interventions towards systems change, and how to evaluate the impact of our change efforts.

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Evaluating Systems Change Results: An Inquiry Framework

At Tamarack’s Community Change Institute in Vancouver in 2015, Karen Pittman, CEO of the Forum on Youth Investment, shared a noble prize worthy piece of poetry:  Programmatic interventions help people beat the odds. Systemic interventions can help change their odds.
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