Why plan the evaluation now?

Often evaluation planning happens after service delivery has started, and in some cases once delivery has finished. This limits what questions can be answered to what data is available.

Embedding evaluation planning into the service design process gives a much greater chance of being able to complete a robust evaluation because:  

• you can find out what the community, stakeholders and funders want to know about your service right at the start and plan to answer those questions 
• you can establish effective processes to collect and monitor the data you’ll need to answer evaluation questions before delivery starts.