One-to-One Support

For this Action Learning Group we built in some one to one support for members to develop their own organisational or project logic models, plans for evaluation and methods for collecting evidence. We did this for a number of reasons:

Better individual stories help to strengthen the collective story
Indicators and methods are based on 'real experience' and 'good practice'
It can help develop case studies which demonstrate what people are doing in practice
It can further build the capacity of members
It gives something back to the organisation in return for the time and effort they have put into the group

This one-to-one support provided organisations with a "critical friend", who could give feedback on the clarity of their story, who could question their logic and help them to think about different ways of expressing that. In addition it helped them to think through the best indicators and possible methods for collecting information. During the one-to-one sessions we focussed on a number of questions below:

Outcomes:
Why is that important and how do you know? Why do you think that that leads to that? These are the "so what?" questions.

Indicators and methods:
Do they seem like the right indicators? Do the methods for collecting data in reality match up with the outcomes and indicators?

Could better use be made of existing data collection forms by making them more outcome- focused? Is too much data being collected? Can things be simplified? Is data collection both sufficiently sensitive to the group giving information and proportionate to the service they are receiving?

Overall model:
Is it plausible, doable, and testable? If you were a stakeholder (funder, user, other agency) what questions might you ask?