Blog

Mar 10 2024

Evaluating the Victorian Public Women’s Art Program

The Victorian Women’s Public Art Program (VWPA) was designed to promote gender equality by addressing the under-representation of women in public places in Victoria. Funded and facilitated by the Victorian State Government through the Office for Women, and delivered by Regional Arts Victoria, the program aimed to highlight the contribution of women from all backgrounds, […]

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Sep 4 2023

Evaluation of an important disaster response program

The 2019-20 bushfire season was the worst New South Wales has recorded. Over the course of a few months, 26 lives were lost, 2448 homes destroyed and 5.5 million hectares of land burnt. If I say St Vincent de Paul Society, what do you think of? Vinnes charity shops along main streets? You’d be right, […]

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Jan 30 2023

Evaluation on a shoestring

It’s the beginning of a new year and you may be wondering how you can afford to conduct that important evaluation of your program, initiative or activity. You won’t be alone. But if you’ve ever felt you shouldn’t proceeded with commissioning an evaluation because of budget or resources constraints, think again. I’ve worked with many […]

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Nov 16 2022

Can too much positivity be a bad thing?

If you run a program, project or initiative that you intend to evaluate, it’s natural that you hope the evaluation will show evidence of positive outcomes. Favourable evaluation outcomes may be needed for your initiative to leverage ongoing funding, perhaps from government, philanthropic funders, or other foundations. As an evaluator, there have been many times […]

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Sep 30 2022

Features of a good peer support program

Last week (19-25 September) was Dementia Action Week. Dementia impacts close to half a million Australians and almost 1.6 million Australians are involved in their care. I’m proud to working with Dementia Australia on an evaluation of their new Peer to Peer support program. Dementia Australia is the peak national body and charity for people, […]

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Oct 19 2021

Practising what I preach

For almost 20 years, my evaluation work has taken me to regional and remote Australia, researching and evaluating arts, disaster recovery and community building projects. In 2018 I researched and wrote an important guidelines document for Regional Arts Australia: Collaborating with Regional Communities. This publication was designed to assist those working in regional communities achieve […]

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Mar 19 2021

Evaluation: 4 reasons to plan ahead

If you work in the delivery of programs, events or initiatives in a sector that has been particularly impacted by COVID—perhaps the arts or cultural sector—it’s likely that things have been a little quiet over the past 12 months. You may have been forced to delay the delivery of something new, and budgets may have […]

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Mar 3 2021

5 things councils need to know about evaluation

Evaluation is important on a local government level for many reasons. As a discipline and process it will enable you to better plan your programs, initiatives, events and activities. It will also give you the tools the test your internal or public documents and strategies. But if you don’t have a lot of experience conducting […]

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Feb 8 2021

5 tips for good survey design

As we emerge from the pandemic and start to evaluate COVID- response programs and initiatives, it’s likely that you may need to collect data in the form of online surveys. Online survey software is available to everyone at little or no cost. But if your survey is not well designed, the internal validity (accuracy) of […]

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Jan 29 2021

Evaluating like COVID contact tracers

Contact tracing is the process of gathering information about the people a known case of COVID-19 might have been in contact with, and the places they have been. Australia now has a well established COVID contact tracing system. I believe contact tracing can serve as a reminder as to what good evaluation is about. And […]

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