Garden Evaluation
USING YOUR DATA
Putting it Together
Once you’ve tracked results and have some data, what do you do?
Firstly, organize the information:
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Store all responses in one place in your computer/office or type them into a spreadsheet.
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Double check for duplicates and remove those results.
Telling Your Story
When reporting on data, help your audience understand why it’s important.
For example, if you track garden demographic data and report that 50% of participants were White, 47% were Black, and 3% were Latino, what's the significance? Give some context. Is that an increase in diversity? Are your demographics now a better representation of community demographics?
More than numbers: If your garden taught 50 middle school kids how to garden, that's a great stand-alone metric. While numbers are a great way to demonstrate some program impacts, sharing anecdotes, positive feedback, & photos can strengthen your reporting.
Not sure where to start? Ask yourself:
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How many responses are there?
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Is the feedback generally positive, negative, or neutral?
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What results do I find surprising?
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What or who is missing from these responses?
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What are the most common responses?
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What are the most unusual responses?
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What themes do I see in the responses?
Not sure where to start? Ask yourself:
Reporting
For the most part, reports relevant to the organizations using this website will be for funders, which means filling out a grant report form provided by the funder, and/or doing grant reporting online.
Commonly, funders will want to know:
1.) What results you originally proposed,
2.) What results you actually got, and
3.) Other results, such as lessons learned, other funding leveraged, press coverage, etc.
Reporting will be a piece of cake now that you have all this evaluation under your belt!
Share what you did, how you did it, and the results
Include your favorite photos!
Anecdotes and quotes from participants add a human element
Thank them for reading and being involved!
Share how you will use this data to move forward!
Regardless of the report format, make sure to avoid:
- Acronyms and jargon
- Unnecessary 'fillers,' (i.e. "our program was just wonderful. We had so many kids that had such a good time and learned so much. Overall our garden program is a huge benefit to the community..." )
- Don’t "info dump" evaluation results into a document; your readers might not have the time, desire, or community context to interpret ten pages of metrics for themselves