A Workshop Summary: Program Evaluation is Vital For Success

Synopsis: The road to success starts with excellent program design. Before any program, service, or policy is designed, you should do a needs assessment to make sure that whatever you are proposing will truly fill a gap and meet the needs of your priority population. Without a needs assessment, how would you know if members of your priority population will find your proposal acceptable and desirable? How would you know what you are proposing is truly needed? How would you know that they will use it? How would you prove that to others?

Learning Objectives: After reading and learning from this resource guide, you will be able to:

1. Describe why the road to success starts with program evaluation.
2. Explain why not having outcomes data leads to a lack of funding.
3. Describe how to tell if your program needs structural alignment.
4. Define a goal versus a SMART objective.
5. List and describe the five different types of program evaluation.
6. Describe the 1795 Group five phases of program evaluation.