One of the early criticisms of outcomes was that organisations would find supporting evidence for these positive statements regardless of the reality of the situation and they would ignore everything else. This fear proved largely unfounded but keeping this potential pitfall in mind isn’t a bad idea. We must never allow our outcomes to become a strait jacket that prevents us from capturing the reality of our work.
More and more funders are telling us that they don’t want the reporting fairy tale: Once upon a time we did this and everyone lived happily ever after! They want the real picture of the difference their support is making… the successes, the challenges and the learning. Alongside expressing this desire some of the more progressive funders have started to address the issue of ‘Funding Assurance’. Working towards the “Harmonising Reporting” principles, helping their funded organisations to improve their evaluation skills or simply being clear about what they want to know are just some of the ways that funders are responding to this key expressed challenge of voluntary organisations.
What we are really talking about here is trust and trust requires honesty from funder and funded alike. So when it comes to reporting… tell the whole story. Show the progress you have made towards achieving your outcomes, record and report on all unexpected outcomes from your work, talk about the challenges you faced along the way and critically… demonstrate the learning that will inform your future plans as well as your future evaluations.
Tom Scott
Tom is the Training Officer for Evaluation Support Scotland, a charity that works with voluntary organisations and funders so that they can evaluate what they do, learn from that evaluation and deliver better services. You can find evaluation tools, support guides and templates on the ESS website.
Really useful thoughts here, Tom. And a good reminder that what we find in our evaluations might not be what we expect – but that’s fine because we can’t always predict every outcome of our work. Some of the most important insights can be those we are not looking for. Likewise, learning from the things that ‘go wrong’ is one of the most crucial parts of evaluation, both for improving services but also in deepening our understanding of need and how it can be met. We cannot innovate and improve in a culture where we cannot fail!
Also very important to remember that this applies equally to evaluations carried out in the statutory sector where external funders can be less prominent feature.