Do any of these situations feel familiar?

  • You’ve no time for hands-on work with any of the projects you’re responsible for, let alone time to evaluate them.
  • You’re feeling under pressure from your manager or funder to produce an evaluation of your project, and the deadline isn’t that far away.
  • It’s not your role to carry out the evaluation. Your responsibility is to oversee the project, and deal with reporting and funding. Your project may be run at arms length from you, perhaps in a separate organisation.
  • You don’t have the skills to carry out an evaluation. You’ve never been involved with one before, and don’t know where to start.
  • You realise you need help to set up your evaluation.
  • You want to participate fully in the evaluation, and you need help to get started.
  • You’re pretty clear about how to run your evaluation; you know you need expert help with part of it, such as a user survey.
  • You’ve collected some information, now you need help to analyse itand produce a report.

If you see yourself in one of the above scenarios, see how your project fits with the list below.

My approach works for:

  • small scale projects, based in Scotland
  • projects in the skills, learning, training, education, childcare, & rural development sectors
  • projects requiring outdoor surveys
  • projects needing an independent evaluation
  • projects which want to make a hands-on contribution to their evaluation
  • projects which want to lead the evaluation themselves, with some expert assistance
  • projects which need a specific input to their own evaluation.

Now, check how your values fit with mine.

It will work best for you if:

  • you are passionate about your project
  • your organisation has a strong commitment to your project
  • you and your organisation allocate at least a minimum of time to contribute to the evaluation
  • you and your organisation want to learn from the experiences of the project
  • you want to work in partnership with an evaluation expert
  • you want to learn how to use some straightforward evaluation skills.

The varied organisations I work with include:

  • Construction Excellence
  • Careers Scotland
  • The Dalriada Project
  • The Highland Council
  • Highlands and Islands Enterprise
  • Inverness College
  • PLUS
  • Scottish Natural Heritage
  • Scottish Childminding Association
  • The Haven
  • Western Isles Education Business Partnership

If you’ve nodded to yourself a few times while reading this page, chances are you need some help with your evaluation, so take a look at My Approach to find out more.