Summary: A logic model is an attempt to show how your program is supposed to work. Have you ever gone for a walk or a drive without a particular destination in mind? I think it’s one of my favorite things. Because there is absolutely no way to get lost. When you wander the only time […]
Articles
Formative vs Summative Evaluation: Which One Do You Need?
Summary: A formative evaluation is about improving your program, activity, or intervention. A summative evaluation is about showing proof that it works. Let’s say you run a non-profit food kitchen. You see your job as feeding the hungry people in your community. You have a pretty basic strategy that involves collecting food from the community […]
Policy Brief One Pager – FreshSpectrum Challenge 1
Welcome to the first FreshSpectrum Challenge. In this series we start with a real-world dense technical report or resource (what I call Nerd Reports). Then through a series of activities, you do the work of breaking it down. The discussion about the challenge, along with tips & tricks, are shared inside the FreshSpectrum Discord community. […]
Behind the Scenes: Developing a FreshSpectrum Content Strategy
Where do I start? If you read my last blog post, you’ll know a little about my plans to turn FreshSpectrum from being my personal/consulting blog into a kind of evaluation forever conference. At this moment in time, early August of 2025, I have lots of ideas and zero funding. I have done a little […]
What’s Next: Building a FREE Forever Conference
I believe the evaluation world is underserved, let’s change that. I started this blog a little over 15 years ago as a hobby and creative outlet sharing my work with just a handful of people. A year and a half later, I started including cartoons in my posts and growing a following on Twitter. Flash […]
Does evaluation have a resource problem?
This post ended up being really long, with lots of data. If don’t feel like reading it, here is the TL/DR version. I wrote a bit about watching so many of our peers losing their jobs back in February. Unfortunately that was not just a temporary thing. This has been a hard year for lots […]