 |
|
Posted February 28, 2005
Book: Projects That Matter: Successful Planning and Evaluation for Religious Organizations Author: Kathleen A. Cahalan The Alban Institute, Washington, DC, pp. 98 An Excerpt from the Jacket:
Presenting evaluation as a form of collaborative inquiry, Cahalan shows how leaders can use evaluation design to develop effective project plans and prepare case statements for donors or grant proposals for foundations. She introduces project planning and evaluation as mission-related practices and invites leaders to consider how their tradition’s particular mission and beliefs influence the way they plan and evaluate. Cahalan concludes the book by making explicit her own theological presuppositions — that the virtues of discernment, stewardship, and prudence are essential for good project planning and evaluation. An Excerpt from the Book: Five Elements of a Project Design 1. Assess the organization’s mission and capacities for the project. 2. Identify project purpose, including conditions and goals. 3. Explain resources and activities 4. Determine results and impact on participants. 5. State the project’s rationale . . . Aquinas chooses docility as part of prudence, which is not a common virtue to most of us but is quite appropriate for planners, evaluators, and leaders. Docility, according to Aquinas, means the prudent person is humble enough “to be ready to be taught.” The prudent person is one who takes good counsel in seeking right reason applied to action; and good counsel involves “research proceeding from certain things to others” which is “the work of reason.” Evaluation is certainly one of the ways project leaders can seek wise counsel. In a certain sense, evaluators serve as project counselors; they have a special vantage point on a project and can provide means by which others can see and appreciate what is happening and why. Another aspect of prudence that might not readily come to mind is shrewdness. In Aquinas’s terms it refers to taking one’s own counsel or “acquiring a right estimate by oneself.” We might just say, “Listen to yourself.” Project leaders are in a position to be shrewd. Along with project staff, they are the people who are closest to the realities of a project, and they can trust what they know and see. Aquinas also believes that the prudent person practices foresight and circumspection — views toward the future as well as the means to the end. Foresight means that the prudent person looks into the future to see “that to which things are directed”; in our terms, the project’s goals. Circumspection requires the prudent person to see that the means to the end — the objectives, activities, an resources — are good. Of course, project leaders demonstrate foresight when they set realistic project goals. Rather than attempting to predict precisely what will happen in the future, planners and evaluators can remain open to the surprises and possibilities that arise over the course of a project. But this requires that they remain circumspect about the resources and activities. Both resources and activities constitute the means to the end, an project leaders can remain alert to ways in which good and evil “commingle” at every level of a project. Table of Contents: Part One Project Planning: Five Elements of a Project Design 1. Assess the organization’s mission and capacities for the project. 2. Identify project purpose, including conditions and goals. 3. Explain resources and activities 4. Determine results and impact on participants. 5. State the project’s rationale Part Two Evaluation as Collaborative Inquiry: Six Steps to Effective Evaluation 1. Focus on evaluation 2. Create an evaluation design 3. Collect and record data 4. Analyze and interpret information 5. Report and disseminate findings 6. Revise the project’s rationale Conclusion Discerning and Prudent Stewards: Theological perspectives on planning and evaluation |
|
