Evaluation toolkit

We think evaluating digital inclusion initiatives is a great idea. It can help make projects more effective and make it possible for groups to demonstrate the impact of their work. It's not always simple to do and can take a lot of time and resources. We want to help. 

We’re sharing this evaluation toolkit so that others can better evaluate their projects.

There are many wonderful people and groups working to progress digital inclusion but few initiatives are formally evaluated. Which means it's harder for funders to know how best to support. 

It also means, there is limited information to understand what works and what doesn’t. So community groups looking to help people in their community may not know where to start.

What is evaluation? 

Evaluation enables you to plan how you will measure success. It helps you to demonstrate the impact of your work.

We want to increase the evaluation skills and knowledge of community groups to be able to incorporate evaluative thinking into their work.

With the help of evaluation consultants Standard of Proof, we have put together an evaluation toolkit.  

If you are working on digital inclusion in your community

We encourage you to use this toolkit. 

These tools will help apply the concepts of evaluation to your work so that you can plan how you will evaluate from the beginning. If possible, we encourage partnering with or at least consulting professional evaluators along the way.

We have learned that evaluation takes time and resourcing. By considering it early, community groups can embed this kind of thinking in their work to demonstrate their impact to funders.

Download the evaluation toolkit. 

• Evaluation toolkit – how to and examples PDF
• Evaluation toolkit – how to and examples MS Word

• Evaluation toolkit - templates PDF
• Evaluation toolkit - templates MS Word

• Evaluation toolkit – consent form PDF
• Evaluation toolkit – consent form MS Word 

• Evaluation toolkit – guidance PDF 
• Evaluation toolkit – guidance MS Word

If you are a funder 

Read our report to learn how we developed this toolkit.

We offered evaluation capability-building support to recent grantees enabling us to test and iterate a toolkit of resources. 

COVID-19 has put communities under added pressure and for our grantees meant unforeseen challenges and delays. This means that some of our recent grantees have not yet completed their projects.

However, it has allowed us to test this toolkit with people in a variety of very difficult circumstances, all working to progress digital inclusion.

Our advice to funders is detailed in the report. Broadly speaking we want to advocate for funders to support community groups to do evaluation. If you do not fund evaluation, it is unlikely to get done, or to get done well. 

Evaluation will often take more time and energy than you might think which is why it needs thoughtful planning and consideration from the outset of a project.

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