Making the complex simple, the complicated doable, the abstract concrete, and the frightening friendly takes a special combination of expertise, experience, and communications skill. Chari Smith brings all that and more to this accessible, important, and insightful book. She shows how to design evaluations that are useful, focus on what's important, and turn findings into actions. Nonprofits will profit enormously from the step-by-step guidance that moves from preparation and planning through question formulation and data collection to making sense of and applying findings. This book delivers on its title. Read, learn, and engage.

Michael Quinn Patton
Founder and CEO, Utilization-Focused Evaluation

This book provides an excellent blueprint for nonprofits to follow as Smith outlines all the necessary steps to get from the idea phase of evaluation to creating reports and communicating the data in a way that shows impact of your program(s) that stakeholders, community members and funders will all understand and appreciate. I found Chapter 4 (Build A Culture of Evaluation) important as I have learned from her that evaluation is not done in a silo and this chapter specifically addresses how to build an organizational culture that will support all parts of the evaluation process.

Jean Hansen
School Partnerships and Youth Outreach, Special Olympics Oregon

Chari demonstrates a keen understanding of how important evaluation is to nonprofit work. She lays it out clearly with an easy-to-read style that makes evaluation understandable to nonprofits seeking to implement sound evaluation processes.

Mark R. McCrary
Program Coordinator, Grantmakers of Oregon and SW Washington

The evaluation design and monitoring for a program is something that I find often feels like a process that is overwhelming for staff resources or requires external support. However, with the steps and templates in this book as a reference, I believe any grant team (which I define as a group of colleagues with a stake in grants being successful) can approach evaluation design in a way that strengthens their grant applications and decreases the stress of their grant implementation and management.

Diane H. Leonard, GPC
President/Owner/Trainer, DH Leonard Consulting and Grant Writing Services, LLC

Understanding your organization’s impact requires using data to learn and improve on a regular basis and that can be a daunting task. In this book, Chari Smith has demystified the process of creating an effective evaluation process for nonprofits. The book offers many practical tips that will help your organization improve results.

Beth Kanter
Virtual Facilitator, Trainer, and Author, (www.bethkanter.org)

Chari Smith has written a comprehensive guide to do-it-yourself evaluation. She's realistic about what non-profits are getting themselves into, providing expert advice clearly grounded in years of experience. Evaluation IS a large undertaking - and one that will change an organization's culture for the better. Chari breaks down the steps of the process and makes it feel accomplishable. The many success stories from non-profit leaders throughout the book testify that evaluation doesn't have to be intimidating and can, in fact, help change the world.

Stephanie Evergreen
Author on 3 data visualization books
Founder of Evergreen Visualization Academy (academy,stephanieevergreen.com)

This book is perfect for nonprofits who are either not collecting performance data, or not using what they have effectively. Chari Smith has written an essential guide for nonprofits packed with numerous real-life examples and a ton of practical, straightforward advice to motivate staff at every level in this area.

Kylie Hutchinson
Author of A Short Primer on Innovative Evaluation Reporting

The ability to measure impact and share that success with the world is foundational to a thriving nonprofit and unlock doors leading to visibility and funding. Leaders mistakenly believe that the process is too expensive, too timing consuming or that their kind of work can’t be measured. Chari’s approach to program evaluation will bust these myths and unlock these doors – offering a simple and accessible approach to your efforts to invite more people to know more and do more for your cause.

Joan Garry
Author of Nonprofits are Messy 
Principal at Joan Garry Consulting and Founder of Nonprofit Leadership Lab

We have struggled for years to effectively collect the data that would allow us to make better programmatic decisions. We also struggle with developing a good core program plan and making sure employees are clear on the outcomes and outputs we expect from a program. As soon as I started reading, ideas I had struggled to understand fully began to crystalize. As a result, I communicated more easily what I wanted to my senior management team. We decided to read the book together in a ‘book club’ format. We intend to roll it out to all employees once we have finished. Highly recommend both the book and the companion website!

Carrie Rodmaker,
Executive Director, Taliesin Preservation

I found myself thinking about our evaluation process throughout the book and ways in which we can do more to highlight our value to our stakeholders. We are a part of a national network of organizations doing similar work. After reading this book, I was encouraged to pull together a group of individual leaders for a book club to figure out how we can apply the key takeaways at our local organizations and share best practices across our network.

David Cohns
Executive Director, First Tees Southeast Wisconsin

For more than 15 years I have worked in various capacities with nonprofit organizations. Through the years I have led the program evaluation and data reporting for these organizations. I was extremely excited to read Nonprofit Program Evaluation Made Simple by Chari Smith. This text reaffirmed my current practices, but also provided me with new insights. I was looking for an easy to follow textbook for a new undergraduate program evaluation course I’m teaching at the University level. I am confident that this will be the perfect text for my students to learn from along with the real-world information I will provide. Chari provides wonderful resources as a companion to the book.

Shaunette Parker, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychology, Lander University