How program evaluation helps you get better environmental outcomes
GeoLit Environmental Program Evaluation Basics
GeoLiteracy is providing a series on environmental program evaluation basics to help explain what we do, why, and how it can help you to save the Earth faster. Subscribe to our email list to make sure you don’t miss anything!
Program evaluation can help you identify, explain, and tell stories about results.
Image: Tyler Butler @outtbdoors courtesy UnSplash
The classic reason program evaluators exist is to help people answer the question, “so what?”
You’ve spent time, resources, and, most importantly, heart to get your environmental work going. You’ve pinched every carbon molecule, trudged through acres of wetlands, knocked on 200 doors, written thousands of letters and comments, planted umpteen hundred seedlings, filed lawsuits, lobbied companies, reduced and recycled and reused until you were out of options.
So what?
What do you have to show for it? Can you see the needle moving as a result of your work?
As performance measurement and monitoring have risen in popularity, we’ve become better and better at counting things:
How many workshops did we hold?
How many people did we reach?
How many acres of forest were conserved?
Annual reports are filled with these LARGE NUMBERS trying to answer questions like these:
235,000 acres preserved!
4,326 students instructed!
60 million gallons of water saved!
We still struggle to make meaning of these counts, though.
Of our 235,000 acres, how many did we want to preserve? How many represent acres of high-value, high-service habitat?
Of the 4,326 students we taught, how many left our program with a strengthened environmental ethic? How many chose to pursue further education or careers in conservation or environmental justice?
How did saving 60 million gallons of water help communities or ecosystems? Where would these gallons have otherwise gone, and to what end?
Program evaluation helps you identify, explain, and tell stories about your results.
Identify:
First, we help you dig through your hopes and plans and work to dig out the results you created. We do this in two ways: by asking about changes in people’s perspectives (using surveys, interviews, focus groups, and other qualitative instruments) and by studying relevant environmental data (like changes in pollution, land cover, land use, and other ecological markers). We also help you find secondary results that represent the ripples of your work spreading out into communities.
Explain:
Next, we work on context. We make sure that we understand the connections between your work and the intended and actual results. We think hard about caveats, conduct sensitivity analyses, and map out other factors that contribute to the results we hope to achieve. Context-setting is important and exciting! There are a lot of us out here trying to make a difference in the sustainability, climate, and environment sector! We are stronger when we work together to achieve a specific goal, but we need to make sure we understand how we each contribute.
Tell Stories:
Last, we figure out how to best tell the story of your hard work. The story is the critical conclusion of a program evaluation. We all need to see what works well and why!
The results and their technical explanations can come off as pretty dull, so we need to provide people with the living context and stories to show why what we do matters. We need to entice and invite them into our work so that we can continue to build support, funds, and energy around our successful efforts.
The more energy we can put into tactics and strategies that work, the faster we can save the Earth!
GeoLiteracy can help!
If you are ready to put your foot on the (carbon-free) gas to get better results more quickly, let’s talk. Book a free, 30-minute consultation so that we can start thinking through what would work best for you and your programs by clicking the “Let’s Chat!” button below.
If you’re not ready to chat (even though we’re really nice), you can get more on the basics of environmental program evaluation by signing up for the GeoLit email list. That will help you to make sure you don’t miss future writing about how program evaluation for environmental, sustainability, and climate work can help you make a bigger difference.
And to all of you out there working to help us solve tricky environmental problems, THANK YOU for your work and dedication! Working together, we can move the needle faster.
