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Evaluation And Review

While you are planning your activity, think about how you will know whether it has been a success or not. This is called evaluating your event or activity.

An evaluation is important for reporting to the board, reporting to the funding body and, importantly, so you can know whether there are ways you can improve for next time.

Most evaluations rely on some sort of counting – for example counting how many participants showed up, counting how many people were involved. However, it's important to think carefully about the reason you were doing the activity. If you were aiming to make the community healthier by getting them involved in sport, you should count how many people actually participated, not just how many attended. If you aim to reduce alcohol consumption by running a drug and alcohol free concert, you should think about how you can tell if there was less alcohol consumed. This might mean asking the participants whether they would normally be drinking. If you aimed to reduce crime, you could ask police if there was less crime while you were running your activity.

For many of these projects, you won't be able to measure success by just counting the number of people who come along.
If you want to see whether there are more (or fewer) people being involved in an activity, it is important to remember to count in the same way each time.

For example, if you run an after school group every day, count the number of people at the same time each week. That way, you won't be comparing attendance at 3.30pm one day (when some kids haven't left school) with attendance at 5pm other days. You might also notice different days of the week are busier than others.

A useful guide to evaluating youth programs can be found at http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/179001.pdf

Feedback from clients

During your event or activity, it is important you take some time to get relevant feedback from the young people to check that it has been a great experience for them.

However, getting feedback is more than just having a chat with a few of the young people. This will often results in good feedback but it is not a real indicator of how most of the participants felt about the event or activity. They are most likely to give honest feedback if they have the chance to give it anonymously. This can only really happen with written feedback forms.

A written feedback form is also useful for reporting to funding bodies or the board, as it doesn't rely on your own understanding of what was said.

A well written feedback form will also help you find out if there are any disputes or other problems before they become too big. Often people will complain to each other or to their parents before they will let the organisers know there is a problem. Asking for feedback makes it more likely that you find out as soon as possible so the problem can be resolved quickly.

The disadvantage of written feedback forms is that very few people use them unless you strongly encourage them. Also, some people have trouble filling them in. Asking a volunteer to help people fill them in will result in more responses and will help them to get more involved.

This sample activity evaluation is ready for you to give to clients after an event or activity to find out how well it went for them.

Activity Evaluation (38 KB)