Writing your grant: Connecting objectives to outcomes

By Courtney Hagan

Research Associate

Invite SEG to partner with you on your next grant proposal.

Writing a grant? When completing your grant application, you may be asked to write objectives, outcomes, measures, and goals. These components help to guide and set-up a sustainable and effective program from the beginning of the process. This specific post will focus on connecting or aligning objectives to outcomes.

Connecting objectives to outcomes is essential to ensure the cohesiveness and alignment of programmatic activities to potential outcomes. Let’s look at a few examples:

• Objective: Expand student advising program

• Outcome: Increase in staff satisfaction

In this first example, the outcome (increased staff satisfaction) does not appear to be related to the objective (expanded student advising program). This is an example of dis-aligned objectives and outcomes.

Let’s look at another example:

Objective: Expand student advising program

Outcome: Improvement in student academic progress

In this example, there is a logical connection between the objective (expanded student advising program) and the outcome (improved student academic progress). This is a strong example of aligned objectives and outcomes.

Think of objectives and outcomes as cause-and-effect pairs. If your institution completes the objective, then it can expect to accomplish the outcome. If your grant application focuses on supporting students through an initiative, such as advising, then follow through by discussing what you would expect to see as a result of advising in the outcomes associated with that objective.

To conclude, it is best to ask yourself this one question when attempting to connect objectives and outcomes:

Is this outcome what I would expect to see as a result of engaging in the objective?

When you work on a grant application with Shaffer Evaluation Group, our team will help you write effective objectives and outcomes that are supported by research. If you're planning to submit a grant application and require an evaluation partner, please contact us at seg@shafferevaluation.com.

The Evaluator-Client Relationship

We’ve previously written about how to work with your evaluator during the grant proposal process and during the pre-award phase, but what about once you are funded? While evaluators are often known to prepare evaluation plans, analyze data, and write reports, there are other ways evaluators can partner with you on a project. Here are some roles your evaluator may take on as needed.

1. Thought Partner

As evaluators, we have the opportunity to work with clients on many different projects across a variety of settings. While there are many differences across projects, there are also similarities that come from projects having the same funding opportunity, a related project area, or similar challenges. At SEG, we schedule regularly occurring meetings with clients, which can be a valuable time for discussing challenges or project plans about which we may be able to offer advice. Even if the evaluator you are working with does not have an answer, there may be someone else in our office that does.

2. Report Translator

Clients usually have specific requirements for reporting, which are often set by the funder. In our December 2022 blog post, we talked about how to avoid your report becoming another “dusty shelf report.” While these are all steps you can take, your evaluator can also support you in developing additional deliverables for a variety of stakeholders including one-page summary reports, infographics, status reports, or slide decks. While not all of these are possible within current contract budgets, there may be opportunities to adjust other work or deliverables to make this possible.

3. Evaluation Advisor

One thing we frequently measure in evaluations are the unintended outcomes that emerge in a project. However, sometimes these outcomes are so substantial that we need to formalize how we capture progress related to these outcomes. Your evaluator can help determine other data sources to use or develop new data collection instruments to meet this need.

While evaluators are often hired with a specific scope of work in mind, we are able to support broader needs. Talking with your evaluator during the contracting process is the best time to discuss additional needs that you believe you may have. However, sharing needs throughout the process is encouraged and we discuss options and possibilities at any time.

How to Read Your Evaluation Plan

By Courtney Hagan

Research Associate

So you’ve connected with your evaluator and they have produced an evaluation plan for you, but perhaps evaluation is so new to you that the plan seems to be another language! SEG is here to help break down the components of the evaluation plan to make it more understandable and clearer.

The evaluation plan contains useful information for you, such as the timeline for when to expect deliverables from your evaluator, the logic model that illustrates your program design, and the evaluation matrix or framework (discussed more below).

For a typical SEG evaluation, the evaluation plan is broken into three sections: the fidelity of implementation, formative or process evaluation, and summative evaluation. Each of these sections have their own evaluation questions associated with them. You’ll find each of these questions in the evaluation matrix of your evaluation plan, along with the analytical procedure and data collection procedure.

For example, a question under fidelity of implementation may be ‘to what extent was the project implemented as designed?’ This question helps the evaluator assess if the project is on track with implementation as it was originally laid out in the grant application. Looking at the example below, we see that an implementation task this project needs to complete in its first year is to hire a project director. The evaluator will request project documentation for each implementation task (under data collection procedure) and then review documentation to assess the progress (analytical procedure).

Another example comes from the formative evaluation, with the question: What feedback was offered by campus stakeholders about the implementation and benefits of project activity components? What recommendations for improvement were offered by campus stakeholders? This section focuses predominately on collecting qualitative data on stakeholder feedback about project activities. Questions in the formative evaluation typically address successes, challenges, and sustainability. In the example below, this question focuses on the stakeholder group of students, with evaluators conducting a focus group to collect information (data collection procedure), and then conducting qualitative analysis on the transcript (analytical procedure).

A final example comes from the summative evaluation, with the question: To what extent has the project met its intended objectives? This section typically focuses on project outcomes and, for federal grants, may also contain Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) performance measures. For this question and example data point from a higher education evaluation, the evaluator would work with an institutional research (IR) office to obtain lists of first-time, full-time students retained from fall-to-fall semester (data collection procedure) and then conduct an independent analysis separate from the IR office to verify the data point (analytical procedure).

The evaluation plan and matrix are particularly important for understanding the data your evaluator needs every year to create an accurate report. Therefore, being able to read and comprehend the plan is helpful when working with your evaluator.

Shaffer Evaluation Group is a trusted partner in evaluation. This partnership starts at pre-award and continues throughout the grant's life cycle. If you're planning to submit a grant application and require an evaluation partner, please contact us at seg@shafferevaluation.com.