Measuring Outputs and Outcomes of Conservation Organizations
This guidance document provides conservation professionals with practical, accessible approaches for evaluating initiatives designed to influence human behavior. By focusing on outputs and outcomes, this document demonstrates how practitioners can show project progress and effects in a credible, manageable way. This guidance document is designed to build evaluation capacity and help practitioners evaluate their own efforts, as experts on their own programs, using adaptable approaches that align with real-world constraints. Included in this document are two complementary forms of evaluation, formative and summative, and readers will learn how each can be implemented at different levels of effort from “light” to more “rigorous” approaches. Throughout, examples, templates, and tips are provided to make evaluation both achievable and meaningful, regardless of prior experience.
By using this guidance to systematically track and reflect on their work, conservation professionals can assess whether their efforts are making a difference, adapt and improve their projects over time, and demonstrate the return on investment of conservation outreach and behavior change initiatives. Specifically, readers will learn 1) what evaluation is and how it applies to human behavior change in conservation; 2) how to track and document project outputs and outcomes; and 3) how to communicate and report success effectively. Grounded in published literature and real-world conservation practice, this document offers user-friendly, actionable strategies that can be tailored to varying evaluation needs and capacities.