Question

Memorandum

Write a brief Memorandum for the Food Research, Enterprise, and Sustainability Hub (FRESH) program team, responding to one of the prompts listed:

• How could/should FRESH invite stakeholders into the evaluation process? How will they identify those stakeholders?
• How could/should FRESH plan to disseminate their evaluation findings? What planning can they do now, to improve the utility of their findings?
• What could/should the FRESH team be considering in their work this year, if they want to be able to demonstrate their program's impact in year five?
• What should the FRESH team know about cultural competence? How could prioritizing cultural competence affect the program itself or its evaluation?

This memo should be written for an audience of program operations staff (not other evaluators) and is likely to include citations for sources you draw upon in your answer. Your memo doesn't need to be formal or formatted in a particular way - the key here is to speak directly to your audience

Answer 1

Stakeholders are people with a stake in the evaluation, including primary intended users and others. The priorities and concerns of different stakeholders informs evaluation planning, communication strategies during and after the evaluation and supports the utilisation of evaluation findings. Different stakeholders can be engaged for different purposes and at different phases of evaluation planning and implementation. It may not be feasible or appropriate to engage all potential stakeholders. Stakeholders can help an evaluation before it is conducted, if it is being conducted, and after the results are collected and ready for use. So many public health efforts are complex and because public health agencies may be several layers removed from frontline implementation, stakeholders take on particular importance in ensuring that the right evaluation questions are identified and that evaluation results will be used to make a difference. Stakeholders are much more likely to support the evaluation and act on the results and recommendations if they are involved in the evaluation process. people who will be making decisions on the basis of the evaluation findings are a key group of stakeholders. Other stakeholders include people who will be affected by decisions made during or after the evaluation and secondary users of the evaluation findings. Evaluation findings are often of interest to policy makers and advocates for or against a particular course of action. Engaging stakeholders is also important for managing risks especially when evaluating a contentious program or policy where key stakeholders are known to have opposing views. It is important to understand different perspectives on what will be considered credible evidence of outcomes and impacts