Public Relations Commentary

Increasingly, public relations pracititioners have to know not only how to write for the Web, but also how to manage and respond to blog postings. This blog was created to use in my public relations courses to help my students prepare to blog and learn how to respond to others in a virtual yet professional manner.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Evaluation Monster Rears Its Pretty Head


If there's one thing I've learned during my time in the public relations Master's program, it's that evaluation is an ever elusive little monster. Public relations cannot seem to find a solid way to evaluate programs, and apparently the profession is not alone. Hoefer's article raises several interesting points regarding nonprofit accountability.
  • United Way of Dallas' initative "to work with local partner agencies to make program evaluation results a required part of the funding application process" (p. 169) seems to be a great start in promoting accountability in nonprofits. But what about those that aren't local partner agencies? How can they be spurred to pursue evaluation and in turn, accountability?
  • It seems imperative that nonprofits find some way to conduct better research. Hoefer notes that "conversations with agency directors and funders indicated that there would not be any evaluations in the Dallas area that used true experimental design" (p. 173). I realize that these findings cannot be generalized to all nonprofits, but how do "we" promote better research methods in nonprofit evaluation? Is it acceptable to do something rather than nothing? Should the results from "relatively weak designs" (p. 172) have much weight? Obviously, as mentioned in the article, evaluation takes time, money, and man-power therefore many nonprofits cannot afford to do evaluation. How do nonprofits solve this problem in the midst of trying to give as much money as possible to their clients while also fairly compensating employees, etc?
  • I found the following quote to be very telling: "The combination of weak designs and unknown measures is troubling because conclusions based on such research are not necessarily valid. Providing possibly inaccurate information to stakeholders, even in good faith, does not lead to a high level of accountability" (p. 174).

Does anyone have these answers? If so, you could probably make a lot of money ...

3 Comments:

  • At 9:23 AM, October 09, 2006, Blogger Richard said…

    Don't forget that there's a good bit of information on how to measure public relations efforts--not just the simple media clippings. We went over a few different articles that touched on evaluation efforts in theory last fall. Perhaps the most interesting one is Fraser Likely's Made to Measure.

    But does that necessarily mean people are picking up on it? No.

     
  • At 11:48 AM, October 09, 2006, Blogger austin said…

    "Obviously, as mentioned in the article, evaluation takes time, money, and man-power therefore many nonprofits cannot afford to do evaluation. How do nonprofits solve this problem in the midst of trying to give as much money as possible to their clients while also fairly compensating employees, etc?"
    As a base point, take a nonprofit that is in the small category. Their main focus is to provide resources to help their clients. The staff is primarily focused with the here and now and how they can get as many of their resources into clients' hands. If they follow up with their clients they want to make sure their service has helped, and most likely aren't taking notes of their follow ups. Hopefully an accountable nonprofit knows how to track down its clients and can follow up with them.
    It doesn't take much to call someone or write them a letter asking how they have benefited from the nonprofits service and if they would use the nonprofit if they could go back in time and do it again. Take a few notes, write up a follow up report and you have evaluation. These are then testimonials to prove if your nonprofit is serving its mission. This is my get rich quick scheme for creating an evaluation plan.

     
  • At 10:11 PM, October 09, 2006, Blogger Evelyn said…

    I think that nonprofits should adopt the management (or administrative) model when they evaluate their programs (the same way it works in the corporate world). They should have a model with objectives, goals, instruments, incentives, etc. to be applied when they evaluation programs.

    Evaluations are part of a systematic procedure that measure, evaluate and influence the performance and results of an employee, organization or a program. The goal is to find out how productive the program is (or whatever we want to measure) in order to make adjustments and recommendations to increase productivity levels.

    Evaluations without objectives are useless. Human resources departments must determine those objectives depending on what the managers (directors or boards want). Evaluations are a valuable tool for organizations because they affect: the relationship between managers and employees, they create an organizational culture and generate diverse information.

    In the case of the employee evaluations, they must have an incentive like salary increase, promotions, career development, among other. Other incentives could be keeping efficiency and productivity levels high, establish strategies for improvement and provide more opportunities for employees to grow in the organization (training and promotion). I believe that in the case of a nonprofit evaluating a program it should work the same way (I do not see why not).

     

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