I think there are a few different ways to evaluate the successfulness of our program. Community feedback will be essential, as part of our project focuses on spreading awareness about environmental issues. We will also need some way to measure the population growth/decline of invasive species, so scientific data and “data expeditions” will be necessary.

  1. The purpose of the organization’s evaluation is to measure how successful our program was. It also serves to help the organization improve in the future by adjusting goals of new programs to be more cohesive or realistic based on previous evaluations. Specifically for our organization, we may find that our evaluation indicates that we didn’t reach our community involvement goal. This could signal to us that we need to lower our involvement goals or find new ways to reach the community.
  2. As stated above, the findings will be used to improve upon programs/proposals in the future. Whether the evaluation is positive or negative, there are always sections of an organization’s program that can be improved upon.
  3. After the evaluation, the organization will know what aspects of their programs work and what aspects don’t work. They will also have a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, which could lead to action on the part of individuals within the organization. In terms of our organization, we could discover how the community is involved in different seasons or how we may need more financial assistance to continue running our programs.
  4. Our organization can do many things after the evaluation, such as rework aspects of our program. Maybe we find that not many people want to read pamphlets based on low subscription rates, so we could shift our focus to updating our website to include a broader range of information. The evaluation, for our organization, can really highlight what community members actually care about, which could help us highlight these aspects in future grant proposals.
  5. The lives of the people and community served will improve after an evaluation because, as stated in number 4, our organization will get a better sense of what people respond to and care about. Upon seeing a community’s priorities, our organization can shift our goals to better suit the people and environment we serve. This will also raise support for our organization from the community, as they will see that our organization recognizes their wants and needs.
  6. Whether our organization uses the funds correctly is something that would be seen after the evaluation, but if we find that funds were mismanaged, our organization will have an opportunity to address how it can improved upon in the future. We would also have a better idea of what aspects of our programs require the most amount of money and which aspects may need less money.
  7. Going along with number 6, our organization won’t exactly know the answer of this question until after the evaluation component. Obviously, if we have thousands of dollars left over, then our budget was clearly inaccurate and we may need a financial advisor to be on board. At the same time, we could be searching for pennies on the street to fund our programs by the end of our program’s life, which means that our organization would have a better idea of what kind of grants to go for.