Training Description

Many new social and health initiatives feature partnerships of organizations agencies across multiple sectors of the community. For many of these partnerships large amounts of time and effort are put into developing the collaborative and a plan for its activities. Often the evaluation elements are single activity or program focus and conducted by a member of the partnership. What does success look like for the whole initiative? What can be done to evaluate the effectiveness of the partnership and the effect of the partnership on the outcomes it aims to change?

Creating a monitoring and evaluation plan that is feasible to implement, identifies reasonable metrics, and addresses an agreed-upon vision of success among partners is critical to the process. This workshop will review examples of multisector partnerships that includes a brief history of each partnership, an overview of the strategies and tools each uses for monitoring and evaluation, and a discussion of the successes and challenges they each experience in implementing their plans for monitoring and evaluation.

Discussion will focus on the critical step of developing an overarching monitoring or evaluation plan for these types of partnerships. Participants will brainstorm the challenges potentially encountered in developing a monitoring and evaluation plan (e.g., time lag for achieving outcomes, complexity of monitoring a multi-faceted initiative, budgetary constraints, potential disagreement among partners) and concrete tips for overcoming these challenges.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the session participants will have an increased understanding of:

Elements of an overarching monitoring and evaluation plan
Measures relevant to multisector initiatives
Challenges encountered in developing a monitoring and evaluation plan
Challenges encountered in implementing a monitoring and evaluation plan
Strategies to support the successful implementation of a monitoring and evaluation plan.