The biggest takeaway organizations gain from planning and engaging in an evaluation is its usefulness. Designed to a specific context, program or policy, evaluations provide organizations with the opportunity to uncover the nuances of their functioning, providing them with evidence that informs how to improve their actions to meaningfully impact those they serve. It was this usefulness that compelled AMP to embark on their evaluation journey when the network was first formed in 2008.

Across AMP’s 17 years, each evaluation that was conducted had a common purpose: To assess whether AMP achieved their objectives in each three-year strategic operational phase. Even with slight alterations to evaluation purposes and goals across each phase, AMP ultimately wanted to determine if their actions were supporting their overall vision and mission. While this is beneficial to know, it is also beneficial to understand what AMP focused on and did across time to raise the profile of mentoring across Alberta. So, let’s dive deeper!

Shifts and Changes in AMP’s Evaluations

AMP’s first evaluation was formative in nature–It was aimed at learning about AMP’s operations in its first two years (2008-2010) to inform and make improvements for future years. This early learning was important because AMP was a new network and the organization needed to know if what was being done at the start was actually working. Therefore, AMP documented their activities to understand whether they were helpful in achieving objectives outlined in the 2008-2011 Strategic Plan. From this, the evaluation highlighted different success and limitation factors, and provided strategies aimed at strengthening the partnership before the start of its second operational phase from 2011-2014.

Moving into their next two rounds of strategic planning between 2011-2017, AMP maintained a formative evaluative stance. By monitoring AMP’s activities, assessing its outcomes, and providing ongoing feedback, the next two evaluations supported AMP’s continued development with several key learnings reflected in recurring themes: Increasing the awareness of mentoring; reach, access to, and value of resources; cultural sensitivity and humility; and the connection to research to strengthen the quality of mentoring. AMP gained an understanding of whether their actions were effective and if their resources, tools and trainings were useful to their partnership. More importantly, AMP was provided feedback on how to ensure their services were meaningful and targeted to their partnership.

The biggest shift was seen in the most recent evaluation, covering AMP’s operational phase from 2017-2020. To assess to what extent AMP met their goals outlined in their 2017-2020 Strategic Plan, the evaluation took a step away from monitoring activities and outcomes. Instead, this evaluation’s focus was to understand, towards the end of the three years, the nature of change their actions effected in their partnership! By sharing these evaluation outcomes with their funders and partnership, AMP was able to inform future mentoring processes and program improvements across Alberta and influence policy making.

What did this mean for AMP?

Since AMP was first formed, each evaluation has shifted and changed in focus. This mirrors the dynamic and ever-changing mentoring needs across Alberta and also AMP’s growth. Even with recurring themes across the evaluations, AMP’s gained knowledge was specific to the expressed needs and experiences of AMP’s partnership in those specific times and contexts. As a result, AMP has evolved and refined their capacity to support and raise the profile of quality mentoring across Alberta in a meaningful way.

AMP is dedicated to continuous learning and skill improvement. To optimize their skills and continue to foster their growth, AMP recognized a need to develop an ongoing partnership in the community specific to supporting their evaluation needs, including developing their evaluation capacity.

Want to know where AMP turned to in the community for this evaluation support? Look for next month's edition of AMP’s Evaluation Journey blog to find out!