The Importance of Understanding Stakeholders
Every program evaluation is conducted in a context in which there are parties (persons, organizations, etc.) who have an interest, or a “stake,” in the operation and success of the program. In the corporate world, a “stakeholder” is any member of the “groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist.” (see Corporate Stakeholder). More recently, the idea of “a stakeholder” has been broadened to include “any group or individual who is affected by, or who can affect the achievement of, an organization’s objectives.” (The Stakeholder Theory Summary.)
Indeed, in the not-for-profit world, stakeholders may include an array of persons and organizations including funders, community members, program participants, family members, volunteers, staff, government agencies, and the broader public.
Stakeholders in non-profits usually fall into one of three categories of legal statuses:
- Constitutional stakeholders such as board members or trustees of the non-profit organization
- Contractual stakeholders, including paid staff, or any business, group or individual that has a formal relationship with the organization.
- Third-party stakeholders including all the people and groups that may be affected by what the organization does. That includes businesses, the local government, and the citizens who live in the community. (See What is a Stakeholder of a Non-profit.)
Nonprofit stakeholders may range from those who support an organization, to those who oppose an organization. Stakeholder can include advocates, supporters, critics, competitors, and opponents. In its analysis of stakeholders in policy change efforts, the World Bank uses the categories of “promoter,” “defender,” “latents”, and “apathetics.” (See What is a Stakeholder Analysis.)
Conducting a stakeholder analysis is very useful for both evaluation and strategic planning efforts. Identifying various stakeholders’ interests in an organization’s mission and programming can help non-profit leaders and staff to be sure that their efforts and initiatives are achieving desired goals. They can also be useful in ensuring that the needs of those served are being directly met. For both evaluation and strategic planning purposes, a stakeholder analysis is an important process for achieving a shared understanding of each stakeholder’s specific interest in, and relevance to, the work of the non-profit or educational organization.
Brad Rose Consulting has developed a unique approach to stakeholder analysis, one that can be extremely useful as organizations examine the purposes, goals, specific activities, and desired outcomes of their work. We often work with organizations to implement stakeholder analyses. These analyses are helpful both in identifying where an organization is, at any given point in time, and for identifying where it wants to go in the future. You can see our basic stakeholder analysis form here.
Resources
One of the most important questions to consider before starting an evaluation is, “How will evaluation findings be used?” There are a number of ways the findings from an evaluation can be used. These include:
When you and your colleagues consider conducting an evaluation, it is critical that you be clear about who the evaluation is for. Your organization is likely to have a number of stakeholders who are interested in learning about whether the programmatic work is achieving its desired results (i.e. outcomes). Some programs are funded by a single funder, others may have multiple funders. Funders are, of course, a very important audience for evaluation findings. They will want to know whether their investment is producing results. However, you will want to consider additional stakeholders as well (see the list below). When you are considering an evaluation—whether it will be conducted by an internal or external evaluator—you will benefit from considering who will be the audience for evaluation findings?
This is the first in a series of blog posts, that outlines the key elements of an evaluation.
“Evidence-based” – What is it?
Qualitative interviews can be an important source of program evaluation data. Both in-depth individual interviews and focus group interviews are important methods that provide insights and phenomenologically rich descriptive information that other, numerically oriented data collection methods (e.g., questionnaires and surveys), are often unable to capture. Typically, interviews are either structured, semi-structured, or unstructured. (Structured interviews are, essentially, verbally administered questionnaires, in which a list of predetermined questions is asked. Semi-structured interviews consist of several key questions that help to define the areas to be explored, but allow the interviewer to diverge from the questions in order to pursue or follow up to an idea or response. Unstructured interviews start with an opening question, but don’t employ a detailed interview protocol, favoring instead the interviewer’s spontaneous generation of subsequent follow-up questions. See P. Gill1, K. Stewart2, E. Treasure3 & B. Chadwick, cited below.)
With the end of the year fast approaching, this is good time to review the array of online resources that we’ve shared in recent months with non-profit leaders, foundation staff, educators, and fellow program evaluators. The links below represent the most popular blog posts of 2015. If you haven’t yet had a chance to look at one or more of these, please feel free to do so. You’re also welcome to share these links with colleagues and to keep these links on hand for future reference.
I like quotes and have collected them for a number of years. Quotes from literature, film, newspapers, and other sources, often capture in a few insightful words, the way the world really works or how it should work. Below are some quotes that maybe useful to you and your colleagues, who manage, staff, and fund programs.