Embedding and leading evaluation

At ESS we encourage organisations to embed evaluation in their everyday work. Our years of experience supporting third sector organisations with evaluation tell us that the more people across your organisation get involved in the evaluation process, the more likely it is that you reach your outcomes, gather useful learning and use evaluation to improve your services. Embedding evaluation means developing a culture of evaluation with your organisation.

How do you start embedding evaluation in your everyday work? We have general resources on embedding evaluation, and more specifically, about leadership in evaluation.

Embedding Evaluation

Guides and tools

ESS Toolkit for evaluation leaders

If you are the evaluation leader in your organisation, this resource is for you! It sets out some key things you need to do as a leader and tips on how to do them.
Making it stick – A guide to embedding evaluation

Guide for people who have a role in making sure that evaluation is embedded into everyday practice within an organisation.
ESS Evaluation Tool: Embedding evaluation diagnostic tool – Making it stick

The Embedding evaluation diagnostic tool is designed to help organisations reflect on what in their organisation is helping make evaluation happen and what could be improved.

ESS principles for good evaluation

ESS developed these 5 evaluation principles for good evaluation

ESS principles for good evaluation

Webinar

Making it stick – webinar

This webinar talks about how to embed evaluation into your organisation, the challenges and barriers.

Case studies

Case Study: Age Scotland

This case study is about how a series of support sessions with ESS helped Age Scotland set organisational outcomes and create a new evaluation toolkit for the whole organisation.
Case Study: Scottish Ballet

This case study is about two tailored support sessions that ESS facilitated for Scottish Ballet, to support them to set and measure outcomes.
Case Study: Girlguiding Scotland

This case study by Girlguiding Scotland is about how to embed evaluation across an organisation who are dependent on volunteers.
Case Study: Victim Support Scotland

This case study is about how Victim Support Scotland developed organisation-wide outcomes, indicators and evidence collection methods.
Inspiring Impact Case study: Embedding evaluation – Harnessing the enthusiasm of staff to make evaluation stick

This case study from Royal Society of Edinburgh is about taking a whole organisational approach to embedding evaluation. Read it if your organisation wants to understand the impact of what it does.

Top tips

Getting others on board (when you’re stuck with evaluation)

We need to get the people that we work with on board if we want to avoid getting stuck with our evaluation. We asked participants of our Inspiring Impact peer-learning event

Leadership in Evaluation

ESS has become aware that to embed evaluation successfully often requires a leader of evaluation in an organisation. Between September and December 2020, we explored what leadership in evaluation looks like, and what is required to make a successful leader in evaluation.

The questions we set out to ask leaders in evaluation are:

What do we mean by leadership in evaluation?
What characteristics, skills and knowledge do leaders in evaluation require to be leaders in their organisation?
What support do leaders in evaluation need?
What support can Evaluation Support Scotland deliver to leaders in evaluation?

Based on our research, we produced the ‘Leadership in enquiry report’ below that details our learning about the topic. You can also download two supplementary documents below: 1) Key messages about leadership in evaluation, and 2) Person specification listed in evaluation.

Leadership in evaluation enquiry report (2021)

This report details our learning from research conducted between September to December 2020 about what leadership in evaluation looks like, and what is required to make a successful leader in evaluation.
Leadership in evaluation – Key messages (2021)

This document lists key messages from our Leadership in evaluation enquiry report.
Leadership in evaluation – Person specification of a leader in evaluation (2021)

This list of person specifications is a result of research into what makes a leader of evaluation.