Creating a Culture of Evaluation with Chari Smith

Evaluation should be accessible, practical, and usable. Chari Smith explains how evaluation programs can help your nonprofit measure your impact and build a positive culture. Feedback, outputs, and outcomes are all critical to making your nonprofit impactful in your community.

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Conversation Highlights

{00:30} Introduction of Chari

{02:19} The work it takes to write a book

{09:03} How do we evaluate programs to find a measurable impact on the suicide rate?

{12:59} Building a culture of evaluation starts with a conversation

{18:56} Hosting the Veteran Podcast Awards

{22:51} The measurable outcome is the cornerstone of what drives the content of all data collection tools

{28:22} Feedback, outputs, and outcomes are critical

{30:46} What are some of the impact or logic models that are created to help with this process?

{42:47} How do you know what to share or what not to share?

Remarkable Quotes

I'm passionate about helping people understand how to use and gather data, to help their organizations thrive.

Chari Smith Tweet

I've been, fortunate to be able to share my excitement and knowledge with other people.

Chari Smith Tweet

Program evaluation is a systematic process to understand what's working in your nonprofit program and what's not working.

Chari Smith Tweet

There's a fear around job security and the fear of losing funding.

Chari Smith Tweet

They're either in it to learn or they want to be right, and if they feel like they need to be right, it's almost like they're closed off to learning.

Travis Johnson Tweet

Thanks to that feedback, I was able to adjust what I was doing and make my show a little bit more inclusive.

Travis Johnson Tweet

Chari Smith Bio

Chari Smith believes evaluation should be accessible, practical, and usable. She founded Evaluation into Action to help nonprofit professionals create realistic and meaningful program evaluation processes. She has taught several workshops helping nonprofit professionals understand the value and use of program evaluation. Recently, she was the opening keynote speaker at the American Evaluation Association Conference.

Her book “Nonprofit Program Evaluation Made Simple: Get Your Data. Show Your Impact. Improve Your Programs.” provides step-by-step instructions on how to do program evaluation. Learn more at: www.evaluationintoaction.com/book.