EvalByte: Building Evaluation Capacity with Diverse Needs in Alberta’s Mentoring Sector

EvalByte
Building Evaluation Capacity with Diverse
Needs in Alberta’s Mentoring Sector
Written by Kirsty Keys & Rachel Zukiwsky (ECN Research Assistants)
What is the context of the project?
With the onset of COVID-19, many community organizations
transitioned to virtual programming to maintain service delivery.
Evaluation has the potential to support these organizations in
demonstrating and improving the effectiveness of this new
approach. However, community organizations in the social-serving
sector have repeatedly asserted a need for evaluation capacity
building (ECB) so that they can conduct meaningful and actionable
evaluations (Carman, 2007; Gauthier et al., 2010). The pandemic
only increased the need for community-based ECB.
To address this need in mentoring organizations who had
transitioned to virtual services, the Alberta Mentoring Partnership
(AMP) and the Evaluation Capacity Network (ECN) partnered
together in 2020 and began offering a variety of responsive,
community-based ECB initiatives. Since then, the goal of the
partnership has been to help mentoring organizations and their
staff build capacity to develop, improve, and demonstrate the
impact of their programs through evaluation.
Who is AMP?
Key points
EVALUATION CAPACITY BUILDING
(ECB) IS CRITICAL IN
SUPPORTING SOCIAL-SERVING
ORGANIZATIONS IN IMPROVING
THEIR SERVICES AND
DEMONSTRATING THEIR IMPACT
THE ALBERTA MENTORING
PARTNERSHIP (AMP) AIMS TO
SUPPORT MENTORING AS AN
IMPACTFUL SUPPORT FOR YOUTH
THE AMP-ECN PARTNERSHIP HAS
PROVIDED VARIOUS RESPONSIVE
AND COMMUNITY-BASED ECB
SUPPORTS TO SOCIAL-SERVING
ORGANIZATIONS
THESE SERVICES CAN SUPPORT
THE SOCIAL-SERVING SECTOR
WITH A WIDE VARIETY OF PRE-
EXISTING EVALUATION CAPACITY
Formed in 2008, the Alberta Mentoring Partnership (AMP) is a
network of community organizations, government, and youth
supporting high-quality mentorship programming in Alberta.
Offering a variety of resources and training, AMP's network
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strives to work together “to strengthen Alberta’s
capacity to support and enhance mentoring” in
order to ensure “young people thrive through
mentoring relationships” (AMP, n.d.).
What is the project working
on?
Our partnership has been focusing on providing
community-based ECB initiatives that are flexible
and responsive to the diverse needs of mentoring
organizations in Alberta. This includes:
Pre-Eval: An 8-part series of recorded 1-hour
introductory evaluation webinars for mentoring
and other social-serving organizations.
E-Eval: A 6-month virtual course supporting
mentoring organizations in building and
implementing meaningful and useful
evaluations. E-Eval includes synchronous
learning sessions, individual coaching, and a
resource website.
ENGAGE: An interactive virtual space with
evaluation resources and discussion boards
where mentoring and other social-serving
organizations can build a community of
evaluation practice to support their ongoing
ECB needs.
Evaluating our initiatives is a critical component of
our ECB system. For example, to improve E-Eval in
its second iteration this year, we have integrated
learner feedback (e.g., more time for interorganization
co-learning) from our first iteration,
as well as Indigenous and decolonial approaches,
in both the structure and content of E-Eval. By
the end of this iteration, we hope to use our
experiences and data to share learnings on how
to offer effective, community-based, and
decolonized ECB.
Why is the project
meaningful?
Our qualitative and quantitative data suggests
that, over the last 2.5 years, the AMP-ECN
partnership provided an effective and impactful
system of community-based ECB. This ECB has
helped mentoring organizations and staff
members feel more comfortable and confident in
conducting evaluations that support them in
improving their services and demonstrating their
meaningful impact. In this way, our partnership
hopes to help mentoring become further
recognized as an effective support for Alberta’s
youth.
Resources
Free access to Pre-Eval: ENGAGE website
AMP’s Knowledge Hub can be filtered for
evaluation resources
Reference
Alberta Mentoring Partnership. (n.d.). About AMP. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://albertamentors.ca/about-amp/
Carman, J. G. (2007). Evaluation practice among community-based organizations: Research into the reality. American Journal of Evaluation,
28(1), 60-75. https://doi.org/10.1177/1098214006296245
Gauthier, B., Barrington, G. V., Bozzo, S. L., Chaytor, K., Dignard, A., Lahey, R., Malatest, R., McDavid, J. C., Mason, G., Mayne, J., Porteous, N.
L., & Roy, S. (2010). The lay of the land: Evaluation practice in Canada in 2009. The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 24(1),
1-49.
Acknowledgment
We would like to acknowledge Boys & Girls Clubs Big Brothers Big Sisters (BGCBigs) for their support in this project, as well as staff
historically and currently supporting this project at AMP and ECN including Rachelle Tong, Al Chapman, Tanya Tourangeau, Jason Daniels,
and Dr. Rebecca Gokiert. This project is supported by funding from Mitacs Accelerate grants.
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Eval
Byte
What is an EvalByte?
The EvalByte series are snapshot overviews of the
Evaluation Capacity Network's ongoing evaluation
and research projects. Additional resources are also
shared in these EvalBytes.
Why you need to read it.
Our EvalBytes will give you the opportunity to learn
not only about our current projects, but
also about
our partners
collaborative research
evaluation practice
community engagement