Evaluation: What Do You Want and How Much Does it Cost?

One of the most common questions I'm asked is: can you help us with our evaluation?
My response to that is always: very probably, what do you want and what are the parameters you're thinking of regarding timeframes and budget? And what is it exactly that you want or need?

Often, people don't exactly know. They know evaluation is a good thing, or at the very least that they should be doing / getting some. But sometimes that's all they know. So here are some things to consider when you want to commission some evaluation (or put it out for tender).

• Typically, evaluation should take around 7% of the cost of your project - give or take. There's no real hard and fast rule but it's about that to get something worthwhile. You can spend more, you can spend less, and this partly depends on the size and duration of the activity.
• Most medium - large cultural projects tend to cost between £6000 and £30,000 to evaluate. Smaller ones understandably cost a bit less - again depending on what you want. (A large agency will cost more than an individual consultant, partnership or small company - there are pros and cons either way. And specialists within the London area tend to cost more than those elsewhere). Really large projects can of course cost more.
• You needn't actually spend 7% or £6-30k. But do think about it taking that much resource. Some of this you might want to allocate to in-house staff so the cost is absorbed back into your budgets. But it's helpful to think of the monetary value to make sure it's properly allocated and planned in and given the value internally that it needs to be done well.
• What are you buying - is it capacity or expertise? If it's capacity you might want to outsource the whole thing. So you need to allocate a bigger budget.
• If it's expertise, an external specialist can guide and mentor someone in the organisation. Your specialist might help set up a framework, templates and methodologies; or they could run some internal training. And then let the team run with it. They might step back in to analyse the data and write your final report. So you can do more with less money wise.
• Discuss costs together. If a specialist hasn't quite 'got' what you're asking for, tell them. They will be happy to adapt their suggestion. Most will give you two or three options with a breakdown of costs to help you focus on what you really do or don't want.
• If you do know exactly what you have available to spend, tell them and ask them to advise you on how it can be best spent to get what you most need.

Two last pieces of advice:
Firstly - if the evaluation is because an external funder expects / requires it, please do be prepared to let an evaluator see your application. They will treat it confidentially, but it is a very quick way for them to give you guidance on exactly what will work best for you. A good specialist won't be pushing a big sale, but they can help you decide which options are going to be best.
Secondly - no matter how much you decide to outsource or not, an evaluator cannot do everything for you. You need a good, consistent, honest working relationship to get the best results possible. The more you put in and own it, the better the relationship and the results will be. Ideally it works as a partnership.

All of this shows how I try and work with organisations wanting evaluation. This is what you can expect from me. You can also just say: "We have £x. We'd like X. Could you do that for us?"