Planning the evaluation

Evaluation planning should not be an afterthought: it is an integral part of programme planning and should start from the beginning.

How you choose to design the evaluation will depend on:

Purpose: when and how to conduct the evaluation depends on the reasons for conducting the evaluation. Prioritize these reasons to ensure effective planning.

• Process evaluation measures whether the programme is going as it planned in terms of implementation, scope, and quality. Formative evaluation refers to evaluating a programme during the course of implementation and helps to monitor and to adjust activities.   
• Impact or outcome evaluation measures whether the programme changed the situation and/or had the planned effect. Conduct a summative evaluation at the end of a programme to focus on programme outcomes and impact.

Staff capacity: what kind of evaluation is possible depends on the expertise available to conduct the evaluation. If the implementing organization does not have the capacity to conduct the level evaluation demanded by a donor, partnering with a university can be a low-cost solution.

Funding allocated for the evaluation: the scope of the evaluation and choices on how to conduct the evaluation depend on the funding available or the evaluation; ideally, programmes should budget at least 10% of the total programme costs for evaluation.   

Evaluation planning is divided into three parts:

• Involving stakeholders in the evaluation,
• Designing the evaluation,
• Planning how to communicate evaluation results.