Theory

The Annotated Guide to Tools & Resources provides tools, frameworks, and resources to help you develop and implement your evaluation. It’s a repository of useful, practical materials that can help you create an evaluation plan; design your evaluation approach; develop or adapt tools and instruments; and otherwise move your evaluation forward.

This Guide was originally assembled from many sources and fields and annotated by evaluator Suzanne Callahan of Callahan Consulting for the Arts. We continue to add resources. Your suggestions are welcome!

Do you have a useful tool or resource to add? Contact animatingdemocracy@artsusa.org.

Authors: Craig McGarvey
This piece is an excellent primer on how to think about outcomes and the hurdles that may arise in measuring them. It addresses and deals with challenges such as measuring intangibles. Published by GrantCraft (a division of the Ford Foundation), the eleven-page guide is written for grantmakers to describe outcomes-based evaluation. It defines key terms and makes a case for why outcome measurement is important.
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Authors: Craig McGarvey
"What are we doing, and why do we think it’s going to make a difference? Are we being effective?" Grantmakers ask evaluation questions like these of their grantees and themselves. This brief guide explains why grantmakers use theories of change to guide their questioning, unearth assumptions that underlie their work, establish common language, and develop strong action plans. Contributors to the guide also describe how a theory of change sets the stage for evaluation by clarifying goals, strategies, and milestones.
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Authors: Terence Lim, Ph.D.
Publication Date: December 31, 2009
Resource Format: book / article
In answer to the challenges that face corporate philanthropy in identifying a shared definition of impact measurement, the author sets out to assess current measurement practices, clarify what is needed in terms of impact evidence, and identify next steps. The article is organized into three conversations between key stakeholders engaged in corporate philanthropy.
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Resource Format: book / article
This paper is one of a number of working papers produced for the project “Understanding the drivers of, and value and benefits afforded by, engagement in culture and sport”. The objectives of the project are to define and model the following broad relationships: 1. The impact of policy options and other factors on the level of engagement in sport and culture. 2. The outcome of engagement in sport and culture. 3. The value of these outcomes. This paper focuses on the last of these points.
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Authors: Craig McGarvey
"In so many evaluations,” said a program officer, “no one thinks to ask the users.” Participatory action research offers grantmakers a way to do so. It engages all parties in all aspects of an evaluation, from defining the problem to gathering and analyzing data to preparing recommendations. In this guide, learn about a unique evaluation method and how grantmakers used it to evaluate programs in agriculture, early childhood development, and immigration.
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Authors: John Bare, Ph.D.
Publication Date: December 31, 2009
Resource Format: book / article
This piece suggests that the accountability movement is “setting a floor for minimum standards” (p. 84) and has consequences for effective social change work. Foundations, in particular, measure impact in terms of attentiveness to accountability standards, but this is a false measure of success.  Instead, the organization’s focus should be on its transformative value to society.
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Resource Format: practical tool, website
Point K Learning Center ("Point K"), a website and online workstation, was created by Innovation Network (Innonet), a leader in the participatory evaluation field and one of the first to make online tools available that could be used by smaller as well as larger organizations. Point K features practical tools and resources for nonprofit planning, evaluation and action. It is a major part of Innonet’s mission of sharing know-how to create lasting social change. Point K aims to help users assess strengths, articulate goals, use data and better tell the organization’s story.
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Authors: Michael Quinn Patton
Resource Format: book / article, practical tool
A bible on the topic of qualitative inquiry, this book introduces the principles and methods of qualitative research and evaluation. Chapters cover conceptual issues in qualitative inquiry (including strategic themes and variety), the design of qualitative studies, fieldwork strategies and observation methods, interviewing, analysis, interpretation, and reporting. Important controversies are outlined, and key points are illustrated with examples. This text is a resource and training tool for applied researchers, evaluators, and graduate students.
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Animating Democracy resource
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Authors: Barbara Schaffer Bacon, Pam Korza
Resource Format: practical tool
This paper reflects Animating Democracy co-directors’ thinking following Working Group discussion of Chris Dwyer’s “Arts and Civic Engagement: Briefing Paper for the Working Group of the Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative.” The discussion got to the heart of the challenges of measuring the social impact of arts-based engagement and somewhat shifted the Initiative’s theory of change.
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Since 2000, the Saguaro Seminar's mission has been both to improve social capital measurement and the availability of social capital data and to undertake analysis of building social capital in increasingly diverse communities. The web site includes extensive information on measurement of social capital including Putnam’s 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, as well as evaluation tool kit, guide, and links to useful organizations and resources. The Saguaro Seminar is an ongoing initiative of Professor Robert D. Putnam at the John F.
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Animating Democracy resource
Authors: Maria Rosario Jackson
Resource Format: book / article, case study
In this 11-page paper based on experience and examples, Jackson lays out in understandable terms a practical and reasonable approach for arts practitioners who are grappling with evaluation of their programs. The piece serves as a reality check for arts practitioners regarding what they can and cannot claim as effects of their programs.
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Resource Format: website
The Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP) is a research center at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice. SIAP conducts research on the role of arts and culture in American cities with a particular interest in strategies for arts-based revitalization. Since 1994, SIAP has focused on developing empirical methods to study the links between cultural engagement and community well-being. This excellent web site includes a number of papers generated by the center reflecting these interests.
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Authors: Innovation Network, Inc. (Innonet)
This 20-page report was produced by Innovation Network – a nonprofit organization that shares planning and evaluation tools and know-how by providing consulting, training, and online tools to help organizations create lasting change in their communities – with support by Annie E. Casey Foundation and The Atlantic Philanthropies. The report examines the current state of advocacy strategy and evaluation practice. It includes a section on the importance of interim measures of success and a list of indicators for advocacy activity.
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Resource Format: book / article
“Scaling Impact” provides a useful discussion on the issues evaluators face when assisting organizations scale up their initiatives. Scaling is the process of replicating or adapting an intervention to a different activity site or for a new organization. Evaluation tools are used throughout the scaling process and to share the results with other organizations.
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Resource Format: practical tool, website
Theory of Change is both a theory of methodology that originated in evaluation of social change initiatives and a method for fostering social change. The Theory of Change method is described as a work in progress intended to help practitioners develop their own way of talking about their initiative’s theory and to use their terms more effectively. This method of planning social change requires participants to be clear on long-term goals, identify measurable indicators of success, and formulate actions to achieve goals.
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Authors: Otto Hospes
Resource Format: book / article, case study
This seven-page article from The Broker magazine aims to help policymakers, practitioners, and scientists make better use of research and evaluation (specifically in the fields of poverty reduction and international development) and uses relatively advanced language. It consists of three sections: evidence-oriented evaluation, realistic evaluation, and complexity evaluation. The introduction explains the important point of how evidence-oriented evaluation has been the dominant approach to date but theorizes a trend away from that modality towards realistic and complexity evaluation.
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