Not a total waste of money. – Evaluation Comics

Not a total waste of money.

Cartoon with one person talking to another, "Look, as an evaluator, I know you are going to focus on the effectiveness of our program model. But our priority is really to just show our department head that we're not a total waste of money."

Published On: May 12, 2022

Can you believe it's been over two years since our last in-person meeting? Just like old times, huh?

Impact Washing is Kind of Like cartoon.

Cartoon with one person talking to another, "Look, as an evaluator, I know you are going to focus on the effectiveness of our program model. But our priority is really to just show our department head that we're not a total waste of money."

Cartoon - I'm a theoretical evaluator. Person 2, "Meaning you develop evaluation theory or you just consider yourself an evaluator in theory." Person 1, "the second one."

Person in front of shed with ribbon, "Before we cut the ribbon on our freshly repainted school storage shed, I would like to thank the 37 organizations that have taken credit for contributing the tens of dollars needed to buy the paint.

Cartoon Person reading..."Give us money and nobody will get hurt." They then say, "okay everyone, I am all for using simple language in our grant applications but can we avoid sounding like bank robbers in the next draft?"

If logic models were drawn to scale…”if you’ll follow me, we’ll head down the hall and take a look at our longer term outcomes.

Cartoon: I'm part of the internal evaluation team. Or, technically, we are the Strategy, Measurement, Evaluation, Learning, and Leadership Team. It was a recent change." Person 2, "SMELL?" Person 1, The group that does the acronyms didn't like our last evaluation. I think the name change was payback.

Cartoon person standing next to machine, "This is our new impact washing machine. Simply drop your impact investment money here and the machine will generate a nice impact statement you can share with your investors."

Cartoon - So this is my first interview with an applicant who showed up without pants. Person 2 (standing in boxer shorts) You know the advice "dress for the job you want?" Well, I want to work from home.

Hi, I donated $20 last year. Can you tell me exactly how many children I've saved?

I don't this this whole NFT and bitcoin thing. They are just made up things that are only valuable because people say they have value. "So just like paper money and shiny rocks?"

We found our new evaluator! Here resume was just okay. But the after the inerview she delivered a very well written actionable report on how we can improve our hiring process.

"If you're cleaning data and you just delete it all. Could you still call it a clean dataset?" Person 2, "Umm, I guess so, kinda misses the point through."

Who, Deja Vu. I feel like we've asked these same evaluation questions before. Person 2, "That's because we have. And I would call them monitoring questions.

That data set is so dirty we might need to put a parental advisory label on it.

“So moving on from the manure and back to the tree,” says person presenting in the front of the room. Person watching, “I think you may be taking the metaphor too far.”

Matchy Matchy Color

Reporting Secret

Pretend we read it.

Itzhak Perlman of Mixed Method Data Governance

Missed Communication

Sure, you can write what you want to write.

50 page word doc 25 page visual report

Creative in the box.

Eval-entine's day

Too many reports?

My Cartoonist Trophy

Do you even know how to use a computer?

You said to only schedule with likely report readers. There are none.

"I was told you find our new report really useful? Person 2, "Oh, I do, I needed to raise my monitor and it was just the right length."

So yea, I went to school for social science, and, yada, yada, yada, now I'm a program evaluator."

Have you ever flipped through a notebook and found some random phrase that you have no recollection hearing, thinking, or writing? "This frog has style. "Asking for a friend."

Fell into a logic model cartoon.

What it means to "fall into" evaluation. "Our grant application requires an evaluation plan. You're good at Excel and power point right?"

"So you just fell into evaluation?" person 2, "I considered starting my own nonprofit. But then I thought, we don't need more nonprofits, we need the ones we have to be more effective.

"Careful? You fall into that and you'll never see our program in the same light again."

I don't get it, it's just a simple word game.

Rich like me cartoon.

We need to prove evaluation works to others.

3 Page report reads like a 50 page report

You're blocking the chart!

Freshspectrum cartoon by Chris Lysy. How to identify a data visualization expert.

Freshspectrum cartoon by Chris Lysy. "We suggest using a modern 1:3:25 reporting strategy." "1 slidedoc, 3 blog posts, and 25 social media posts."

Freshspectrum cartoon by Chris Lysy, Person 1, "A few years ago I launched my independent consulting practice." Person 2, "Neat, what kind of consulting do you do?" Person 1, "Oh, you know, a little of this, a little of that."

Freshspectrum cartoon by Chris Lysy, "I use lots of jargon because I care more about precision than you understanding my lesson."

Freshspectrum comic by Chris Lysy. One person to another, "So you don't find long wordy evaluation reports inspiring? That's just me?

Freshspectrum cartoon by Chris Lysy. An older Alice seeing the white rabbit walk by, thinking, "Not falling for that one again. I'm much too busy anyway." Rabbit looking at pocketwatch saying, "I'm Late."

freshspectrum cartoon by Chris Lysy. Person driving a car (badly), "I love this new smart dashboard. It's so engaging. Look, you can play candy crush.

Audience Interest Level Cartoon - High Interest - "Give me all the data." Medium interest - "Okay, I'm listening, what you got?" Low Interest - "I'm sorry did you say something?"

Freshspectrum cartoon by Chris Lysy - Weather app with a methods section.

Cartoon by Chris Lysy. man says, "This makes no sense." Woman replies, "Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it doesn't make sense." Inspired by Vidhya Shanker.