aes24 International Evaluation Conference

Authors: Claire Grealy (Rooftop Social ),Duncan Rintoul (Rooftop Social, AU),Virginia Poggio (Paul Ramsay Foundation, AU),Luciana Campello (NSW Department of Communities and Justice, AU),Kirsty Burow (NSW Department of Communities and Justice, AU),Jacqueline Webb (National Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (NAPCAN), AU)

The evaluation of grant programs has long frustrated grantees and perplexed fund managers.
Evaluators often arrive at the end, and may find a strong narrative about the funded activity (assuming the project staff are still in place) but less of the documentation and data that demonstrates the impact or learning, or shows the link between each project to the fund objectives.

Fund managers have often had to be content with the limited results available to them, sometimes as basic as acquittals on activity and expenditure. This limits funders' ability to capture learning, feed into new fund designs, mount budget bids, or tell a compelling story about the work grant holders are doing.

This panel brings together a cross-section of key players and beneficiaries from a variety of contexts:
* a state government fund manager in the human services sector
* an evaluation lead from a large national philanthropic organisation
* an experienced project manager from a national NGO that receives grants from various sources
* two evaluation specialists who have deep experience working in this space, developing and delivering this kind of support.

Drawing on case studies from practice, this panel will share some innovative approaches from their work, which bring the right mix of expectation and support to the design stage of grant-based projects, from the time of submitting an EOI through to the point of evaluation readiness.

The fruit that hangs off this tree includes:
* strengthening the 'evaluability' of each project and the overall fund
* testing each project's assumptions and ambitions
* deep conversations between grant makes and grant holders about outcome alignment
* building the evaluative thinking and capability of project teams and organisations, activating the 'ripple effect' as participants share their newfound commitment and skills with their colleagues.
"You couldn't drag me to program logic workshop before this. And now look at me - I took that process you did with us and yesterday I ran it with my team on another project."