ESS has been around since 2005 so you’d think by now we could judge the best evaluation in show. Sorry – we can’t! Because evaluation isn’t a competition. There isn’t a single standard of excellence. What “good evaluation” is depends on what you need it for, your context, the needs of your service users and practical considerations, such as time and resources.
But that doesn’t mean anything goes. There are principles you can use to judge if your evaluation is good enough for you.
So, good evaluation:
Is about what matters
Fits the way you do your work
Involves the people you support
Is used by you, and
Is communicated well to others.
Click here to find out a little more about what each principle means.
We’d love to hear from you about our principles.
- We want to know what you find most difficult about evaluation
- We want to help you improve your evaluation so it’s good enough for you
- And we want to celebrate good third sector evaluation (because there’s lots of it!)
- We want to show each other and funders what is meaningful evaluation – and what really is not.
