This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 9, 2012 - Those who go to work helping people in the social services sector usually do so because they want to make a difference.
Yet, ironically, it’s precisely the area of endeavor where measuring a difference may be harder than making one.
“I actually think the entrepreneurial environment has in many ways, spurred the entire social sector along,” said Amanda Moore McBride, associate dean for Social Work at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work. “With business thinking about returns on investment, this has transformed us to think about evaluation as a way to articulate to donors and others what they will get out of their investment. If you don’t have an evaluation framework in place, you can’t answer that question.”
Innovation and social entrepreneurship will be one of five tracks under examination at an upcoming two-day confab at Washington University this month, entitled Evaluation for Social Impact: A St. Louis Summit. It’s the inaugural event for the gathering which McBride said will attract at least 175 participants from various areas of the human services.
Other tracks to be addressed include children, youth and family, community economic development and health as well as arts and culture.
The event will be keynoted by Michael Quinn Patton, a former president of the American Evaluation Association. His talk will be followed by “spark” presentations, fast-paced discussions designed to generate ideas.
The first day is slated to conclude with a “progressive dinner” with speaker Mario Morino, a co-founder of Venture Philanthropy Partners.
The second day will consist of a number of workshops moderated by representatives from relevant organizations such as the Wyman Center, Beyond Housing, the Nine Network and COCA. The innovation and social entrepreneurship session will be led by Ken Harrington of the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.
Audience members will be polled in real time for their reactions.
The afternoon will consist of four more tracks dealing with issues such as leadership development and measurement methods.
“The boards of non-profits ... are made up of average citizens and they may not be trained in evaluation. So how do you bring the board along and help them define the right metrics and then use that information?” McBride asked.
McBride said the conference is designed to address issues that are quickly coming to the fore in the field.
“It’s really the culmination of a yearlong planning process with 15 service agencies in St. Louis, major leaders including the United Way, and recognizing that the status of evaluation has changed in the sector,” she said. “No longer are agencies and agency directors feeling like ‘I’ve just got to do this for a funder. You are just making me do this.’
She thinks that’s a development that has really spurred interest in the field.
“This is about leadership and collecting information that will provide them with the input they need to make good decisions about their programming and the impact they are having,” she said.
It's also a field that is changing and looks far different than it did just a few years ago. No longer is evaluation simply a matter of counting heads or producing statistics reflecting how many people have been served over a given period of time to put in the brochure.
“That’s where the field was about ten years ago," she said. "Instead, now we look at how we measure changes in those people’s lives.”
Such qualitative measures can include anything from asking whether the individual is drug-free to whether they have obtained proper housing. Most of the results are self-reported.
“We are encouraging the attendees to be teams from organizations,” she said. “We would like to see a board member, an executive director and then those front line program staff who are the ones that are conducting the evaluations.”
Sponsors for the event, which is set for Oct. 16-17, include the Skandalaris Center, Nine Network, the Rome Group and Youthbridge Community Foundation. Attendees can register online or do so by phone at 314-935-6661.