Please check out Using Grantwriting Principles in Planning: Part 1 and Part 2 before reading this post. In those posts, I cover purpose, goals and objectives - essential parts to planning a program and writing a grant. I also discussed the importance of using grantwriting principles to explain your program to those who might have questions. In this post, I will cover methods and evaluation.
Methods
Methods include your program description and processes used to achieve your desired outcome, goals and objectives. This is the implementation of your program. Your goal may be to reach more children at your museum, but how will you do this? Sometimes your objectives include this and often times you need to know your methods before writing your objectives.
My methods for the internship program I'm launching include provide an internship conference for all interns. This will allow interns to share their work, learn from other interns and learn how to present at conferences (a major part of working in museums). That one method helps achieve multiple objectives of my program.
Evaluation
This term may or may not be familiar to you as some museum studies programs teach it, while others do not, and some museums use evaluation, while others do not. You have probably at least seen a survey or heard of a focus group, if not participated. In grant writing terms, evaluation is to see if you accomplished your desired outcomes.
For museums, evaluation covers a number of different objectives. For more information on evaluation in museums, please visit Indiana University's website which goes into great detail on this topic. The type of evaluation I will be focusing on is summative.
Evaluation for grants is to provide information to the funder about the success (or challenges) of your program. If you are not applying for a grant, evaluation can be a great way to determine your own successes and areas for improvement, especially if this is a program you plan on doing again. You can also use the information to demonstrate the impact your program is making to your supervisors. Surveys, interviews, focus groups are some of the ways you can discover this information. Be sure to read up on best practices and confer with HR before distributing a survey or conducting an interview.
Informal Science is a great resource for evaluations. It provides information on ongoing projects and past evaluations. Check out the summative evaluations to get some examples for inspiration. Also, look into front-end evaluation. Doing a front-end evaluation may be a way to help justify starting your program.
Recommended Reading:
Introduction to Evaluation, American Association of Museums
Practical Evaluation Guide, Judy Diamond, Jessica Luke & David Uttal
