How to Choose the Best Nonprofit Evaluation Course
Morning friends,
I do love kitchen gadgets. Williams-Sonoma is for me what Home Depot is to my husband. I love to go in, skip the expensive espresso machines and come out with a $10 gadget. The only problem is that sometimes, I find the gadget, although it seemed useful at the time, was just another thing taking up space. Like that green herb stripper that I’ve never used. Can you relate?
Have you ever signed up for a training, cleared your calendar, and walked away thinking,
“Well, that was interesting, but what do I actually do with it?”
Lately, more of the nonprofit leaders I talk with want to build evaluation skills inside their own teams, and many are searching for the right nonprofit evaluation course. Funders are asking harder questions and requiring more accountability. Boards want to know what’s working.
And you want to know, too, because you didn’t get into this work to guess if you were helpingthe people you serve.
The good news?
Evaluation doesn’t have to feel like a graduate seminar. The right course can make it practical and even (dare I say) enjoyable. The wrong one can leave you with a binder full of theory and no idea where to start on Monday morning.
So how do you choose? Here’s what I’d look for.
1. Look for a Nonprofit Evaluation Course Designed for Nonprofit Professionals
Nonprofit evaluation is its own animal. Academic approaches to evaluation often assume you need a research team, have a big budget, and loads of time. Corporate evaluation tends to focus on profit and productivity. Most nonprofits I’ve worked with have none of those luxuries.
You have a small staff, a lean budget, and a mission that matters. Look for training grounded in the challenges you actually face: real programs, real constraints, real people. Be honest with yourself about your experience level. Are you brand new to evaluation, or do you need a refresher on a few specific skills? A good course will tell you who it’s designed for.
2. Make Sure It Teaches Practical Program Evaluation Skills
A solid evaluation course should walk you through the whole process, not just one slice of it. Look for these building blocks:
• Developing good questions that get to the value of what you are doing
• Explains terms simply. Know your output from your outcomes
• Choosing data collection methods that fit your program and your capacity
• Communicating results to your most important audiences
• Using your results to improve your strategy and programs to show your impact
If a course skips these, keep looking. Data that sits in a drawer doesn’t help anyone.
3. Look Beyond Theory to Evaluation Tools You Can Actually Use
Theory has its place. But what you really need are worksheets, templates, frameworks, and real examples you can pick up and use. Even better, look for a course that gives you chances to apply what you’re learning to your own programs while you learn it.
And here’s a big one: you shouldn’t need a PhD to understand it. If the course materials read like a statistics textbook, that’s a sign it wasn’t built for you.
4. Ask About the Instructor’s Nonprofit Evaluation Experience
Before you sign up, ask a few questions. Has the instructor worked with nonprofits and community organizations? Have they sat in board meetings, built the logic models, and helped a coalition or nonprofit make sense of its data? Credentials matter, but so does time in the real world.
5. How to Choose the Best Nonprofit Evaluation Course for You
When you compare courses, look at the content, the format, how accessible it is, what resources come with it, and who’s teaching it. Then ask yourself the most important question:
What do I want to be able to do when I’m finished?
That’s exactly the question I asked when I built Powerful Evidence. I’ve been helping nonprofits and community organizations for more than 25 years, and I founded Community Evaluation Solutions in 2004. Powerful Evidence is my evaluation training course for nonprofit professionals.
It covers all the basics you need to get your team started. It includes:
7 Modules + 1 Bonus Module
5+ Hours of Guided Video Content
80+ Page Workbook
I cover evaluation basics, logic models, theory of change, asking good evaluative questions, when to use quantitative and qualitative measures, communicating results and more. Ready to make evaluation practical? Explore Powerful Evidence here. The course is $22 off to celebrate CES’s birthday.
Take care, friends,
Ann
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