Abstract
Youth-serving organizations seek effective and cost-efficient solutions to build evidence and advance their impact. Some common challenges include choosing data systems or assessments, budgeting and planning for 3rd-party studies, and refining measurement and outcomes when programs expand or change. Evaluation advisory boards (EABs) are a low-cost solution to add evaluation capacity and can be mutually beneficial to both youth-serving organizations and evaluation experts. Previous research suggests that EABs may encourage meaningful use of data, support internal evaluators, and/or facilitate difficult conversations among stakeholders. However, there are very few examples of successful EABs in practice. This paper shares the perspectives of EAB members and organizational evaluation leaders from a large national after-school program, After-School All-Stars (ASAS), including (a) a description of the benefits of EABs, (b) how EABs may be especially helpful with the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and (c) examples of youth-serving organizations’ EABs. The experiences and lessons learned by ASAS and its EAB are generalizable to other non-profit youth development programs. Recommendations for structuring EABs based on organizational goals are provided.
Recommended Citation
Garst, Barry; Pann, James; Berry, Tiffany; and Biesecker, Gretchen
(2021)
"Building Evaluation Capacity in Youth-Serving
Organizations Through Evaluation Advisory Boards,"
Journal of Youth Development: Vol. 16:
Iss.
4, Article 6.
DOI: 10.5195/jyd.2021.1077
Available at:
https://open.clemson.edu/jyd/vol16/iss4/6
