Design Your Program With Evaluation in Mind

When you design a program, it’s easy to focus only on the immediate decisions necessary to get the program up and running. But you will have a hard time evaluating the program—or it could even be impossible to evaluate it—if you don’t plan for an evaluation at the very beginning. Evaluations can show whether a program is working as intended, determine whether it has achieved its objectives, and identify areas for improvement. Planning in advance can ensure the evaluation is feasible and transparent and has a realistic timeline. It can also give you and your stakeholders time to identify an experienced evaluation partner or collect baseline data.