Evaluation = How you can improve your activities
The term ‘evaluation’ is a broad term. You can evaluate virtually anything, and you can interpret it in (at least) two ways.
- Evaluating your work to improve the way you carry out your activities, thereby improving outcomes for your stakeholders; and,
- Evaluating your work to improve the outcomes of your work for your stakeholders.
You can conduct an evaluation without explicitly measuring whether anything has changed for your stakeholders.
Impact analysis = How you can measure whether change has occurred
The impact of your activities is measured by analyzing whether they have led to change(s). Often, to truly assess the impact, you would need to measure a situation both before and after an intervention or activity. In some situations, this is not possible. For example, when you try to understand your impact after a project has ended or when you cannot collect data at the beginning.
Sometimes a change that occurs is unexpected and only becomes apparent afterward. In theory, you can conduct an impact analysis without analyzing how you could improve your activities.
Want to do more with impact? Take the free online self-study module on Measuring Impact from the DEN Academy.
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