Literacy Basics - Community Literacy of Ontario

Who is responsible for Program Evaluation?

Evaluation is a board governance responsibility. This doesn’t mean that the Board of Directors or other governing body has to actually carry out the evaluation, but it does mean that they are responsible for seeing that it gets done. To do this, they can appoint staff, a board committee, a group of volunteers, hire a consultant or do it themselves. The choice is up to them, but it is the board’s responsibility to see that it happens. It is also the board’s responsibility to review the evaluation results and be involved in program planning based on those recommendations.

Be sure to refer to CLO’s A Guide for the Development of Policies and Procedures in Ontario’s Community Literacy Agencies (Volume Two) for more information about developing evaluation policies in literacy agencies. You can find the Guide at www.nald.ca/litweb/province/on/clo/policies/guide2/cover.htm.

Some Boards do get very actively involved in the evaluation process. Connie Morgan from the Barrie Literacy Council wrote about their experiences for the March 2005 issue of CLO’s newsletter available at www.nald.ca/clo/newslet/mar05/mar05.pdf. The newsletter describes how the Board of Barrie Literacy Council made the decision to do a complete evaluation of their program … definitely an ambitious undertaking! After having completed this exercise, they have made a further commitment to conduct a comprehensive evaluation every two years. Although many literacy agencies will not be able to commit to the same level of evaluation activity, it is nevertheless important for agencies to take the time to evaluate their available resources and include program evaluation as a regularly scheduled activity.

Whose Job Is It?

a) Staff
Regardless of the level of commitment from the Board or other governing body, agency staff will be quite involved in the program evaluation process. Staff might be appointed to contact stakeholders and conduct interviews, to compile statistics, and other tasks. Staff will also probably be quite involved in implementing any changes that result from the program evaluation.

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