The Latest

Evaluating Systems and Social Change: New Developments and A Ground-breaking Program by SFU

One of my roles as ‘curator’ of the Tamarack Institute’s Evaluating Community Impact work is to track and share ideas and methodologies that community changemakers might find useful in their work.  

Over the next six months, I will focus on evaluating systems change and social change. Innovators  all over the world are focused on reforming or transforming systems, whether they be related to energy, child protection, ecological education, economic, social systems, or (more likely) a mix of all them.

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How Do We Know We are Making a Difference in Our Neighbourhood Work?

I was speaking with Howard Lawrence from Abundant Community Edmonton about their work around neighbourhood development and we got talking about making a difference in our community and how do we know if anyone is better off because of the changes/activities that have been implemented.  How do we measure change in our neighbourhood work?  Howard told me about a tool called the Sense of Community Index that is used in the social science area to determine sense of community. 

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Weaving Together Accountability and Learning in Complex Situations

Michael Quinn Patton, evaluation expert, has argued that even the best intentioned, well-resourced evaluation processes can become, “the enemy of social innovation” if change-makers, evaluators and funders employ a traditional – rather than developmental – approach to assessment.  

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Principles-Focused Evaluation: Newest Approach for Evaluating Complex Change Efforts

One of the toughest challenges for social innovators and evaluators is to describe the “it” they are trying to evaluate. While they typically have a general idea of the outcome they would like to see (e.g., an end to homelessness, addressing mental health issues, a feeling of inclusion), they often struggle to lay out the pathway(s) to get there. This makes it difficult for both parties to land on questions, indicators and/or methods around which to build an evaluation design. 

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Matching Evaluation Strategies to Community Rhythms

Communities change when people work together, but working together means pulling people out of their comfort zones.  That is never easy.  Good community animators know that their approach has to be carefully calibrated to their context.  Strategies that are helpful in one circumstance may not work in another. That is one of the main insights I took away from the Harwood Institute Public Innovators Lab I attended last year.  

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Six tips for conducting meaningful evaluation in rural and remote communities

In planning for the Evaluating Community Impact Community of Practice (Eval CoP), members participated in two summer working group sessions to highlight challenges they faced in their poverty-related evaluation work, and brainstormed topics, content and speakers that could address them. One area that members were greatly interested in learning more about was ‘How to conduct meaningful evaluation in rural settings’.

In response, we invited Dr. Jeannette Waegemakers Schiff, associate professor in the Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary, to join our September call to share her experiences working on two studies: 'Housing First in Rural Canada' and 'Rural Alberta Homelessness', as well as to share her top tips to more effectively conduct evaluations in rural and remote communities.

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