Tag Archive for: place-based work

How to make evaluation useful in complex projects

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Good evaluation in complex projects should bring clarity, not confusion. When projects are collaborative, fast-moving or evolving as they go, evaluation can quickly become heavier than it needs to be.

 

When projects are collaborative, fast-moving or evolving as they go, evaluation can sometimes become heavier than it needs to be.

People worry because the work is complex, the evaluation has to be too. They are concerned that they need to measure everything, hear from everyone and produce huge amounts of data to prove value.

Good evaluation in real-world projects does not work like that.

It is not about collecting the maximum possible amount of information. It is about collecting the right evidence, in the right way, at the right level, so it fits delivery and actually gets used. That’s what makes for good evaluation in complex projects.

Complex does not mean measuring everything

One of the most common mistakes we see is the assumption that every participant needs to fill something in, and every part of the project needs to be measured in detail.

Usually, that is neither realistic nor useful.

A good sample is a good sample. If it is worked out carefully, it can give you robust insight without requiring every single person to complete a survey. That matters especially in busy, public or time-limited settings, where asking too much can damage the experience rather than improve the evidence.

Good evaluation is not about exhausting your audience. It is about making sensible choices.

Proportion matters

This is where proportionate evaluation really comes in.

If someone has volunteered on a project every week for almost a year, has given a lot of time and built a meaningful relationship with an activity, then a 20 or 30 minute conversation may be entirely proportionate. In fact, that kind of deeper reflection can be exactly what helps you understand change, value and learning.

But if someone is attending a one-off training session, festival or short event, the right ask may be only a few seconds. A quick question, a simple rating, a brief reaction. In that context, a long survey is not good evaluation. It is a bad fit.

The method should match the nature of the participation.

The real problem is often not too little data, but too little focus

Sometimes organisations have not had enough time to get clear on what they are really trying to achieve.

When that happens, evaluation spreads too thin. People try to measure too many things, worry about every target at once, and collect information without a clear sense of what matters most. The result is often lots of data, but not much insight.

We also regularly see organisations holding pages of analytics, reporting dashboards or monitoring returns that they do not really know how to interpret. The challenge is not always collecting the data. More often, it is understanding what it means and how to use it.

Data becomes powerful when it has context

A single big number is rarely enough on its own.

Data starts to become useful when it is compared to something else: a baseline, a previous month, a different group, a previous phase of delivery, or the change a project was actually trying to create.

For example, knowing what result you got in April may be mildly interesting. Knowing how April compares to March is often much more helpful. That is what begins to show direction, pattern and change.

This is where evaluation becomes practical. It helps people make sense of what is happening, not just record that something happened.

Good evaluation should help people use their limited time well

At its best, evaluation is not just there to satisfy a funder or complete a report. It should help delivery teams think more clearly, focus their energy and improve what they do.

That is why we put so much emphasis on proportional evaluation. We want it to feel reasonable for participants, manageable for staff and suited to the scale of the work. We want to collect less, but use it better.

If we come in early enough, we can often help sharpen that focus from the start: what matters most, what is realistic to gather, and where evidence will actually help people make decisions. If we come in later, we can still help make sense of what exists. But the strongest evaluation is usually built in early, with enough structure to be credible and enough flexibility to work in the real world.

  • Complex projects do not need evaluation that is heavier, louder or more complicated.
  • They need evaluation that is thoughtful, proportionate and useful.
  • Because messy does not mean unmeasurable. It just means the approach needs to be smarter.

Working on something complex, collaborative or still evolving? We help charities, cultural organisations and partnerships build evaluation that is proportionate, credible and genuinely useful.

 

How to measure pride in place, belonging and community change

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How to measure local belonging

People often talk about pride in place, belonging and community change as if they are too vague, too emotional or too intangible to measure properly.

We do not think that is true.

These outcomes can be measured, and they matter. But they need to be handled carefully. You cannot reduce them to one headline number and call it done. Equally, you do not need to throw up your hands and say they are impossible to evidence. Good evaluation sits in the middle. It translates broad ideas into clear questions, gathers evidence in ways people can answer honestly and easily, and combines numbers with richer insight so the findings actually mean something.

That matters particularly in culture, heritage and place-based work, where some of the most important outcomes are about how people feel, how they connect, and whether a place starts to feel more meaningful, welcoming or full of possibility.

These outcomes are measurable

One of the most common misconceptions we come across is that you cannot really measure something like pride in place.

You can.

A large part of our job is helping clients turn broad ambitions into sensible evaluation questions. That means taking an outcome like pride in place or belonging and translating it into something people can respond to quickly and clearly. Done well, that gives you a usable numerical measure rather than a vague impression.

But we do not stop there.

Because while a good numerical measure is useful, it is rarely enough on its own. Pride in place is not just a score. Belonging is not just a percentage. Community change is not just one chart. These are lived, felt and relational outcomes. If you want to understand them properly, you also need the richer insight that comes from people’s own words, reflections and experiences.

That is why we often combine quantitative and qualitative evidence. We want to know how people answer, but also why.

Good questions matter

The real skill is not simply asking whether people feel proud of where they live. It is designing questions that are fast, clear and meaningful enough to capture something real.

That can mean creating a simple question that gives you a numerical measure you can track over time. It can also mean asking people to reflect on what has changed, what shaped their feelings, or whether they experienced the place differently before and after taking part.

The point is not to make the method feel heavy. The point is to make the evidence useful.

That is especially important in public-facing or community settings, where people may be engaging casually, briefly or in very different ways. If the evaluation feels clunky or intrusive, you will not get the best evidence anyway.

Numbers matter, but they are stronger with context

A numerical score can be helpful. It can show where you are starting from, whether things are shifting, and how different groups compare.

But a number on its own only tells you so much.

We often strengthen that evidence by combining it with qualitative insight from the people taking part in the work or experiencing a place as it changes. That might include people describing how welcome they feel, whether they speak differently about the area, whether they feel more connected to its identity, or whether they feel they have more stake in what happens there.

We also look for comparison where it helps. That might mean comparing results over time, comparing one group to another, or using wider benchmarks where appropriate. A single score is useful. A score with context is far more powerful.

Timing matters too

Another important part of this kind of evaluation is knowing when to collect the data.

Not all change happens at the same speed. Some shifts can happen quite quickly. Others take much longer to build. Part of the evaluator’s job is to understand how long this kind of change is likely to take, when it makes sense to collect a baseline, and whether a simple before-and-after approach is enough or whether a longer view is needed.

Over time, we have developed practical ways to track change without making the process cumbersome for participants. That means we can often look at change over time in a way that still feels manageable and proportionate.

Once that data is in place, we can also segment it carefully. That helps clients understand not just whether something changed, but for whom, in what context, and after which activities. That is often where the most useful insight sits.

Place-based change does not look the same everywhere

One of the most useful things evaluation can do is show that different places start from different points.

In one recent piece of work, we measured pride in place across two neighbouring towns with very different identities. One had a long-established heritage and a stronger historic character. The other was a newer town with a more industrial feel.

What we found was that pride in place was higher in the more established heritage town than in the newer one. But that did not mean the newer town was doing badly. It showed something more interesting than that: places do not all begin from the same baseline.

A lower score is not always bad news. Sometimes it shows where there is more room to grow.

That kind of finding is useful because it helps clients interpret the data more sensibly. Instead of seeing one place as “good” and another as “bad”, they can see where the opportunities are, where more effort may be needed, and how local identity may shape the pace and type of change.

Different groups may feel differently too

In that same piece of work, we also found that people aged under 19 showed higher pride in place than those aged 19 and over.

That mattered because the project was looking at change over a ten-year period. It suggested that the next generation already feels strongly connected to both places, and that this could influence how pride, belonging and local participation develop over time.

This is another reason why segmentation matters. A single overall score can hide as much as it reveals. Once you start looking by age, group, place or level of involvement, you often get a much more useful picture.

That is where evaluation moves beyond description and starts helping people think strategically.

Community change needs more than a headline number

The same is true of community change more broadly.

If you only look for one visible sign, like attendance or footfall, you will miss a lot of what matters. Community change often shows up in patterns such as stronger local relationships, more confidence to take part, greater visibility of local stories, more shared activity, better connection between groups, or a growing sense that people belong and have a stake in what happens next.

Some of that can be measured numerically. Some of it needs to be heard in people’s words. Usually, the strongest evidence comes from combining both.

  • At its best, evaluation does not flatten outcomes like pride in place or belonging into something simplistic. It makes them visible without stripping away their complexity.
  • Pride in place, belonging and community change are not too vague to measure.
  • They are just the kinds of outcomes that need thoughtful evaluation.

Working on a place-based, cultural or community project and trying to evidence change well? We help clients measure the things that matter without flattening them into something less useful.