Why Don’t We Evaluate? (Pt. 1)

In our last blog, we talked about the benefits of evaluation for nonprofits. Regardless,  nonprofits have their reasons for not doing evaluation and in my time as an evaluation consultant, I’ve heard a lot of them.  Originally, I thought this blog would cover all the reasons in a single post. But there are enough obstacles and solutions that it really should be split into two parts. Here’s part 1, where we address concerns around Cost and Time.

Reason 1: “It’s too expensive”:  Let’s start with the most common, and most understandable, reason nonprofits don’t do evaluation. Evaluation costs money. Since most nonprofits don’t have extra funds just laying around, they deprioritize evaluation. This mindset makes sense if you see evaluation as just another cost. However, evaluation is an investment that will pay off in the future. Evaluation leads to cost savings, greater efficiencies, and more “bang for the buck,” and can lead to your organization getting more grants, and bigger grants because you’re documenting your impact so much more.

So how do you pay for it? Well, the best-case scenario is to find a grantor who understands evaluation is important and is willing to pay for it. More and more grants allow for, or even require, a percentage of their grant to go towards evaluation. If your grantor doesn’t specifically allow for it, ask them—especially if it’s a multiyear grant. Funders will appreciate your commitment to program improvement.

For evaluation that is not tied to a specific program or grant, you might need to use some of your unrestricted dollars. Get your board behind evaluation as a line item by framing it as an investment. If you have businesspeople on your board, you’ll be speaking their language because every successful business is going to have metrics they have to measure and work towards.   Maybe one of the businesspeople will even donate to pay for the project!  However you pay for evaluation, remember that it’s an investment in your organization being even stronger.

Reason 2: “We’re too busy to take the time to evaluate”: Again, no way around it—evaluation takes time. If you hire a consultant, they may do most of the work, but every project is going to require some staff time, even if it’s just occasional meetings with the consultant to make sure you’re on the same page. Maybe you don’t want to burden your front-line staff with more meetings (or more data collection).  Maybe you don’t want to burden leadership with more emails or reports to review.

There are a few ways around this issue. Again, with the mindset that evaluation is an investment, the time spent on evaluation now will lead to time savings in the future. When asking staff to spend more time on evaluation related work, communicate the reasons behind it, and the benefits for them, your clients, and your mission. But most of all, make sure you put realistic limits on the time you spend on evaluation and data. There are always more data to grab and more analyses to run.   But the more time you spend, the more you run into diminishing returns. Focus on the most important, the most useful evaluation questions and resist the urge to (or tell your consultant to) go down every rabbit hole in search of an interesting finding. Doing so ensures that the time you spend is well worth it.

Cost and Time are the biggest reasons why nonprofits don’t evaluate. But sometimes nonprofits think evaluation just isn’t worth it. In Part 2, we’ll look at reasons why nonprofits think evaluation wouldn’t help them, and how to get past those obstacles.