Part I. Developing an Outreach Campaign Plan

Step 6: Evaluate the outreach campaign

Evaluation provides a feedback mechanism for ongoing improvement of your outreach effort. Many people don't think about how they'll evaluate the success of their outreach program until after the program has been implemented. Building an evaluation component into the plan from the beginning, however, will ensure that at least some accurate feedback on outreach program impact is generated. Ideally, feedback generated during the early stages of the project will be used immediately in making preliminary determinations about program effectiveness. Adapting elements of the outreach effort continually as new information is received ensures that ineffective components are adjusted or scrapped, while pieces of the program that are working are supported and enhanced.

Why evaluate?

Outreach programs often involve a tremendous amount of effort and resources, and evaluation will help you build support for ongoing funding and save you time and money. Justifying the program—showing how it supports achievement of the overall goals and objectives—means identifying what worked, fixing what didn't, and ensuring that outreach continues to enhance the watershed program. You need to know what worked and why so you can build on it or make adjustments in the future. Perhaps you used foundation or other funds that require a demonstration that water quality actually improved or other measurable progress was made. Evaluating success is not difficult if you initially develop concrete, measurable objectives against which your achievements can be compared. In addition, focusing the outreach effort on discrete target audiences provides a manageable approach for both implementing the outreach program and measuring its success.

Types of evaluation

An outreach program evaluation should include the following types of evaluation:

• Process evaluation. This type of evaluation relates to the execution of the outreach program itself. Process evaluations focus on implementation of activities as they relate to budget requirements, schedules, staff resources, and tasks or activities. Process evaluation occurs as the program is being implemented, early enough in the outreach delivery process to allow modifications before too many resources have been expended. Some typical questions asked during process evaluations include the following:
  • What effect did the effort have on the process?
  • Did people attend the meetings?
  • Did the message get to the media?


• Impact evaluation. This type of evaluation relates to achievement of the goals and objectives of the program. Impact evaluations assess the outcome or impacts produced by the outreach program and are directly tied to the original objectives. This type of evaluation measures the effect of an outreach program on the target audience by asking, "To what extent did we achieve our objective?" Typical performance measures under impact evaluations include increased awareness, knowledge of an issue, changes in perceptions or behavior, repeat participation in a targeted activity, and goal-oriented measures of water quality improvements.



• Context evaluation. This type of evaluation relates to how the project functions in the community as a whole, how the community perceives the project, and the economic and political ramifications of the project. Context indicators can provide some background and perspective on why certain approaches appear to be working well while others are not. Examining contextual information related to the audience, the outreach program, and the watershed issues under study can provide some perspective on what's working, what's not, and why. Assessing how the project functions within the economic, social, and political environment of the community helps to uncover aspects of the objective, message, audience, format, or distribution mechanism that might be affecting results. Focus groups that examine the social, economic, political, and cultural context of your project can identify problems that weren't noticed during the planning or execution phase.

Using indicators

Indicators are tools for assessing and communicating the status and success/shortfalls of a project or effort. There are three main types of indicators that can be used during the evaluation processes described above:

• Administrative indicators (these are the "bean counting" indicators)
• Social indicators (these indicators help determine changes in attitudes or behaviors)
• Environmental indicators (these indicators help measure environmental improvements)

There are a number of tools that can be used to conduct evaluations. Many of them you've already used in Step 2 when researching your target audience.