Evaluating the LIVE Campaign

Evaluating the LIVE Campaign:

Tracking Activities and Documenting Success

Why track and evaluate your LIVE activities?

If it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen! Clinicians hear this all the time in relation to their clinical documentation. The same is true from the perspective of philanthropic supporters. Foundations, government agencies, individual donors and corporate sponsors want to support organizations with a proven track record. Telling them that you do good work isn’t enough, you need to document it!

Tracking activities and events is essential for documenting the power and impact of the LIVE campaign. Every time you can point to tangible evidence of your success, you increase your chance of generating more resources. Funders, partners, underwriters, private contributors all want to know that their contributions and efforts are going to make a difference.

Information on your activities and the outcomes can help:

Attract more partners to the work - People are more eager to work on projects that are making a visible difference.

Attract funding - Individuals and grant makers (large and small) want to know that you have a track record of hard work and results.

Get publicity and work with the media - Reporters are looking for a good story, a “hook” and concrete information about the impact of your work.

Increase efficiency and effectiveness - Capture the lessons learned from every activity

What should be tracked and how?

Forms are provided in this section for tracking the basics and some optional information. Refer to the additional resources if you want to do more.

Track essential “process” and “outcome” information(who, what, where, when, why, how and what happened) about every LIVE activity. Use the Activity Tracking Form during planning, implementation and as follow-up to every event and activity. NOTE that this form captures all of the information you will need to obtain your LIVE Reward points (See LIVE Rewards, Section VII). It should take no more than 15-20 minutes to complete the form.

√Track “process” information

What did you do and when it was done?

Who helped plan, implement and support the event?

How many people from the community participated?

How many and what kind of materials were distributed?

Who attended? (Use a sign-up sheet to grow your mailing list!)

√Track outcomes and results

Informal feedback from participants – what you heard them say about the event either on-site or afterward

Your group’s impressions of the activity or event:

What went well?
What would you do differently next time?
Lessons learned?

What happened as a result of this event/activity:

New opportunities that arose?
New partnerships?
Changes to your goals or plans?

√Track impact on participants. This takes a little more time and effort, and may not be possible for all events or for all coalitions, but the effort is worth it – and earns additional LIVE Rewards.

Use the Participant Feedback Form template in this section to find out:

What did participants learn?
Did their attitudeschange?
Did they get what they came for?
What did they do (or will they do) following the event/activity?

√ (Optional) Capture your stories

Turn stories from your events into elements of the assessment by using the Capturing Stories Guide provided in this section

Tracking and assessment tools – provided in this section

A LIVE Evaluation Tracking Form- including all of the information you will need to get your LIVE Reward points

A Participant Feedback Form templatefor assessing impact of events/activities for participants – includes suggestions for using the form

Capturing Stories for use in assessment and evaluation

Additional Resources

We also recommend the following sources of assessment tools and information:

Gathering Information: Monitoring Your Progress by Aimee Whitman & Eric Wadud (article, tools and checklists), from Community Tool-Box website, Part J, Chapter 38

Providing Feedback to Improve the Initiative by Chris Hampton (article, tools and checklists), from Community Tool-Box website, Part J, Chapter 39

Stories as Hard Data – the technique of “Journey Mapping” by Dr. Barry Kibel,

The Evaluation Section of the Toolkit was written by Melanie Merriman, PhD, Touchstone Consulting, North Bay Village, FL.