Funding Difficulties

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<a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/study/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-133 tag-link-position-45" style="font-size: 21.791044776119px;" aria-label="study (7 items)">study</a>, <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/twitter/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-164 tag-link-position-46" style="font-size: 22.537313432836px;" aria-label="Twitter (8 items)">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/user-interface/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-20 tag-link-position-47" style="font-size: 28.358208955224px;" aria-label="user interface (21 items)">user interface</a>, <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/video/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-118 tag-link-position-48" style="font-size: 21.791044776119px;" aria-label="video (7 items)">video</a>, <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/visitors/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-97 tag-link-position-49" style="font-size: 25.522388059701px;" aria-label="visitors (13 items)">visitors</a>, <a 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It wasn’t until 2011 that the behemoth toymaker LEGO acknowledged girls’ desire to build with bricks, even though the company had long before made a seemingly effortless pivot to co-branding, video games, and major motion pictures. So it’s little wonder that girls face all-too-real obstacles when <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2014/03/05/gender-role-literacy-girls-in-science/">[…]</a></p> <a class="more" href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2014/03/05/gender-role-literacy-girls-in-science/">Read more</a> </article> <article class="post"> <div class="article-footer"> <time datetime="2013">9 Dec 2013</time> <h4><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/12/09/challenges-of-crowdsourcing-analysis-of-historypin/">Challenges of crowdsourcing: Analysis of Historypin</a></h4> </div> <p>Crowdsourcing can build virtual community, engage the public, and build large knowledge databases about science and culture. But what does it take, and how fast can you grow? For some insight, we look at a crowdsourced history site: Historypin is an appealing database of historical photos, with dates, locations, captions, and other metadata. It’s called History <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/12/09/challenges-of-crowdsourcing-analysis-of-historypin/">[…]</a></p> <a class="more" href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/12/09/challenges-of-crowdsourcing-analysis-of-historypin/">Read more</a> </article> <article class="post"> <div class="article-footer"> <time datetime="2013">18 Nov 2013</time> <h4><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/11/18/dinovember-creative-literacy-starts-young/">Dinovember: Creative literacy starts young</a></h4> </div> <p>“Uh-oh,” Refe Tuma heard his girls whisper. “Mom and Dad are not going to like this.” It’s Dinovember, and his family’s plastic dinosaurs have been getting into mischief all month. Every year, Tuma and his wife devote the month of November to “convincing our children that, while they sleep, their plastic dinosaur figures come to life. Related <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/11/18/dinovember-creative-literacy-starts-young/">[…]</a></p> <a class="more" href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/11/18/dinovember-creative-literacy-starts-young/">Read more</a> </article> </section> </div> </div> </div> </div> </header> <main role="main" id="main"><div id="twocolumns"> <div class="container"> <h1>Funding Difficulties</h1> <div class="twocolumns-holder"> <section id="content" class="about-holder img-posts"> <article class="post"> <div> <h3>Author: Patrick Parnaby</h3> </div> <p></p> <div> <p>Incorporating technological tools into evaluation plans can please funders.</p> </div> <p></p> <table border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0" width="211" align="right"> <tbody> <tr> <td align="right"></td> <td align="right"> <div><img src="http://www.idea.org/i/evaluation/eval010" border="0" alt="" width="157" height="184" /><br /> Your funders will want you to look at your project from many angles. Providing them with a sound evaluation plan gives funders the assurance they need.</p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p></p> <h1>Problem</h1> <p>Your project wasn’t able to secure funding because your evaluation plan was “weak.”</p> <h1>Solution</h1> <p>Develop a comprehensive evaluation plan early in the grant writing process that measures the validity of your program’s objectives and include an evaluation budget in your funding request. The early plan will help clarify goals, define objectives and refine procedures. Integrating technology into your evaluation plan makes it more feasible, manageable, and cost effective, thereby increasing the chances that your project will be funded.</p> <h1>Discussion</h1> <p>Performing a descriptive, summative evaluation on a program can help demonstrate to stakeholders that the program is meeting its objectives. An action-oriented, formative evaluation can help define objectives more clearly and allows you to use the feedback to make changes where necessary.</p> <p>An evaluation plan should:</p> <ul> <li>Describe the project’s stakeholders.</li> <li>Identify what questions the evaluation will answer.</li> <li>Explain what data you expect to collect.</li> <li>Demonstrate how you will collect and analyze the data.</li> <li>Describe how you will deliver your results to your stakeholders.</li> <li>Outline the budget for the evaluation.</li> </ul> <p>A good evaluation plan is flexible enough to allow for modification as program needs change or if the evaluation results are not as expected.</p> <p>Because the logistics of developing and implementing an evaluation plan can be cumbersome and costly, projects sometimes promise what they can’t deliver. This can have a decidedly negative impact on prospective funding for future projects. Introducing technology can help your evaluation plan succeed, and increase the chances that your current and future projects will be funded, by judiciously integrating a technology system into your evaluation. Technology systems can make data collection and reporting considerably easier, faster, and less costly. Funders will appreciate that you can have better evaluation data earlier, that you and your staff won’t spend your energies dealing with the logistics of paper data collection, and that the feedback from your constituents will be qualitatively and quantitatively better than that collected through traditional methods.</p> <p>Several options for stand-alone technological tools are available that can help you collect evaluation data or manage your project. If you have a savvy technical team, you can use free, open source software; your project can buy, license, or use commercial software products; or another option is to use an integrated system that links evaluations, content, and reporting, and results in the ability to obtain, manage, analyze, and disseminate evaluation data about specific parts of a program or project.</p> <p>References:</p> <ul> <li>Worthen, B., Sanders, J. & Fitzpatrick, J. (1997) <em>Program evaluation: Alternative approaches and practical guidelines.</em> (2nd Ed.) New York, NY: Addison, Welsley, & Longman.</li> </ul> <ul> <li>Patton, M. (1997) <em>Utilization focused evaluation: The new century text.</em> (3rd ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.</li> </ul> <ul> <li>Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation (1994) <em>The program evaluations standards: How to assess evaluations of educational programs.</em> (2nd Ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.</li> </ul> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.eval.org/">American Evaluation Association</a> web site.</li> </ul> <hr />Patrick Parnaby, a professor of sociology, was the former director of P.F. Consulting & Social Research, a research-based consultancy specializing in survey design and social research.</p> </div> <div class='yarpp-related'> <h3>Related posts:</h3><ol> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2006/04/01/no-one-uses-your-great-program/" rel="bookmark" title="No one uses your great program">No one uses your great program </a> <small>Author: Patrick Parnaby Using a variety of evaluation techniques can reveal hidden truths about your program. Evaluation isn’t...</small></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2006/04/01/keeping-your-project-healthy-accountability/" rel="bookmark" title="Keeping Your project healthy & accountability">Keeping Your project healthy & accountability </a> <small>Author: Patrick Parnaby Skilled project management can mean the difference between success and failure. Managing your project effectively...</small></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2006/04/02/rethink-fruitless-evaluation/" rel="bookmark" title="Rethink fruitless evaluation">Rethink fruitless evaluation </a> <small>Author: Patrick Parnaby A useful evaluation plan incorporates a number of factors. This penguin did a thorough evaluation...</small></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/02/19/what-is-crowdsourcing-and-how-does-it-apply-to-outreach/" rel="bookmark" title="What is Crowdsourcing? And how does it apply to outreach?">What is Crowdsourcing? And how does it apply to outreach? </a> <small>Crowdsourcing means involving a lot of people in small pieces of a project. In educational and nonprofit outreach, crowdsourcing...</small></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/10/24/usability-and-user-experience-testing-options/" rel="bookmark" title="Usability and user experience testing options (vendor list)">Usability and user experience testing options (vendor list) </a> <small>What was once prohibitively complex and expensive can now be done inexpensively with online testing services. Testing will uncover...</small></li> </ol> </div> </article> <section class="comment-respond"> <div id="respond" class="comment-respond"> <h3 id="reply-title" class="comment-reply-title">Leave a Reply <small><a rel="nofollow" id="cancel-comment-reply-link" href="/blog/2006/04/01/funding-difficulties/#respond" style="display:none;">Cancel reply</a></small></h3> <form action="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-comments-post.php" method="post" id="commentform" class="comment-form"> <p class="comment-notes"><span id="email-notes">Your email address will not be published.</span> Required fields are marked <span class="required">*</span></p><p class="comment-form-author"><label for="author">Name <span class="required">*</span></label> <input id="author" name="author" type="text" value="" size="30" maxlength="245" required='required' /></p> <p class="comment-form-email"><label for="email">Email <span class="required">*</span></label> <input id="email" name="email" type="text" value="" size="30" maxlength="100" aria-describedby="email-notes" required='required' /></p> <p class="comment-form-url"><label for="url">Website</label> <input id="url" name="url" type="text" value="" size="30" maxlength="200" /></p> <p class="comment-form-comment"><label for="comment">Comment</label> <textarea id="comment" name="comment" cols="45" rows="8" maxlength="65525" required="required"></textarea></p><p class="form-submit"><input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" class="submit" value="Post Comment" /> <input type='hidden' name='comment_post_ID' value='272' id='comment_post_ID' /> <input type='hidden' name='comment_parent' id='comment_parent' value='0' /> </p><p style="display: none;"><input type="hidden" id="akismet_comment_nonce" name="akismet_comment_nonce" value="3b1f506714" /></p><p style="display: none;"><input type="hidden" id="ak_js" name="ak_js" value="246"/></p> </form> </div> </section> </section> <aside id="sidebar"> <section class="widget inner-text"> <h3>Related posts</h3> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2006/04/01/no-one-uses-your-great-program/">No one uses your great program<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>Author: Patrick Parnaby Using a variety of evaluation techniques can reveal hidden truths about your program. Evaluation isn’t helpful unless you measure the right things.  Problem You’ve implemented the feedback from your focus groups, but your project is still failing. You are confused because test users say your program is great, but no one is <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2006/04/01/no-one-uses-your-great-program/">[…]</a></p> </article> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2006/04/01/keeping-your-project-healthy-accountability/">Keeping Your project healthy & accountability<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>Author: Patrick Parnaby Skilled project management can mean the difference between success and failure. Managing your project effectively requires that you see the forest and the trees, and that you look at yourself. Problem You have tight budget constraints, numerous important deadlines, a small staff to accomplish a large task, and you need to keep <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2006/04/01/keeping-your-project-healthy-accountability/">[…]</a></p> </article> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2006/04/02/rethink-fruitless-evaluation/">Rethink fruitless evaluation<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>Author: Patrick Parnaby A useful evaluation plan incorporates a number of factors. This penguin did a thorough evaluation and concluded that he is short. This was not useful news.  Problem Your evaluation was expensive, but the results are not very useful. Solution Accurately define your stakeholders and their needs, and use that information to develop <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2006/04/02/rethink-fruitless-evaluation/">[…]</a></p> </article> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/02/19/what-is-crowdsourcing-and-how-does-it-apply-to-outreach/">What is Crowdsourcing? And how does it apply to outreach?<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>Crowdsourcing means involving a lot of people in small pieces of a project. In educational and nonprofit outreach, crowdsourcing is a form of engagement, such as participating in an online course, collecting photos of butterflies for a citizen-science project, uploading old photos for a community history project, deciphering sentences from old scanned manuscripts, playing protein folding <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/02/19/what-is-crowdsourcing-and-how-does-it-apply-to-outreach/">[…]</a></p> </article> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/10/24/usability-and-user-experience-testing-options/">Usability and user experience testing options (vendor list)<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>What was once prohibitively complex and expensive can now be done inexpensively with online testing services. Testing will uncover problems that are confusing for your audience. Here’s a list of vendors to start your research process, and some suggestions. Three suggestions For a real-world example on a recent project, designer Ben Snyder said on his blog, “the <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/10/24/usability-and-user-experience-testing-options/">[…]</a></p> </article> </section> </aside> </div> </div> </div> </main> <aside class="info-links"> <div class="container"> <div class="left-holder"> <p><time datetime="2006">01 Apr 2006</time> , post by <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/author/idea/" title="Posts by IDEA" rel="author">IDEA</a></p> </div> <div class="right-holder"> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/evaluation/">evaluation</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/fundraising/">fundraising</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </aside> <aside class="items-holder"> <div class="container"> <div class="list-items widget-apps-widget"><h3>Read more about <br class="separator"><strong>our language-related apps.</strong></h3> <ul> <li> <div class="item-holder"> <a href="http://www.idea.org/otherwordly"> <picture>  <source srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/otherwordly_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-35x36.png, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/otherwordly_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png 2x" media="(max-width: 767px)"> <source srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/otherwordly_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/otherwordly_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-140x140.png 2x">  <img src="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/otherwordly_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png" alt=""> </picture> <span class="title" style="color:#c46e3c">OtherWordly</span> </a> </div> </li> <li> <div class="hr"></div> <div class="item-holder"> <a href="http://www.idea.org/inotherwords"> <picture>  <source srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/inotherwords_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-35x36.png, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/inotherwords_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png 2x" media="(max-width: 767px)"> <source srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/inotherwords_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/inotherwords_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-140x140.png 2x">  <img src="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/inotherwords_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png" alt=""> </picture> <span class="title" style="color:#8b8be0">In Other Words</span> </a> </div> </li> <li> <div class="hr"></div> <div class="item-holder"> <a href="http://www.idea.org/linguabase"> <picture>  <source srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/linguabase_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-35x36.png, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/linguabase_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png 2x" media="(max-width: 767px)"> <source srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/linguabase_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/linguabase_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-140x140.png 2x">  <img src="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/linguabase_appicon_1024px_rounded_01-70x70.png" alt=""> </picture> <span class="title" style="color:#b859cc">Liguabase</span> </a> </div> </li> </ul> </div> </div> </aside> <footer id="footer"> <div class="container"> <nav class="page-nav"> <ul> <li id="menu-item-4498" class="menu-item menu-item-type-post_type menu-item-object-page menu-item-home menu-item-4498"><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/">Home</a></li> <li id="menu-item-4497" class="menu-item menu-item-type-post_type menu-item-object-page menu-item-4497"><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/about/">Mission & history</a></li> <li id="menu-item-4499" class="popup menu-item menu-item-type-custom menu-item-object-custom menu-item-4499"><a title="popup" class="js-btn-show-popups" href="#wrapper">Browse topics</a></li> <li id="menu-item-4666" class="menu-item menu-item-type-post_type menu-item-object-page menu-item-4666"><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/contact/">Contact IDEA</a></li> <li>Copyright © 2025 <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog">IDEA</a></li> </ul> </nav> </div> </footer> </div> <link rel='stylesheet' id='yarppRelatedCss-css' href='//www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/style/related.css' type='text/css' media='all' /> <script type='text/javascript'> /* <![CDATA[ */ var wpcf7 = {"apiSettings":{"root":"https:\/\/www.idea.org\/blog\/wp-json\/contact-form-7\/v1","namespace":"contact-form-7\/v1"},"cached":"1"}; 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