Evaluation Capacity Building Through Community-University Partnership

Abstract

Evaluation is essential to achieving program outcomes, especially when stakeholders engage with evaluation and make use of the findings. Both of these activities require evaluation capacity that might not be present in community-based organizations. In this paper, we describe how community-university partnership models can support evaluation capacity building (ECB). The basic framework for our ECB initiative was a semester-long, master's-level university course in which 5–6 community partners worked with small groups of 3–4 students to design an evaluation plan. We used mixed-methods to assess (1) if organizations implemented the evaluation plans developed in the course; (2) how organizations used the findings; and (3) what evaluation skills participants continued to use after the course ended. We found that organizations that implemented their evaluation plans gained intended outcomes of ECB, such as improving practice and communicating with stakeholders. These results suggest that community-university partnerships for developing ECB can be effective.