Book review: The great nonprofit evaluation reboot: A new approach every staff member can understand
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Author | Alison Rogers |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1035719X19871085 |
| Subject Matter | Book review |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1035719X19871085
Evaluation Journal of Australasia
2019, Vol. 19(3) 151 –153
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1035719X19871085
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Book review
Elena Harman, The great nonprofit evaluation reboot: A new approach every staff member can
understand. Pleasant View, TN: CharityChannel Press, 2019. AU$65.64.
Reviewed by: Alison Rogers , The University of Melbourne, Australia and The Fred Hollows
Foundation, Australia
I received a call from an exasperated manager of a non-profit organisation. After only
three months, their internal evaluator had resigned. Another round of recruitment had
to begin and the manager was calling me to debrief about what had gone wrong before
embarking upon the quest to find another. The break up was amicable and the evalua-
tor had provided a plethora of reasonable explanations that resembled ‘It’s not you –
It’s me.’ But the manager felt that at the heart of the breakup was a fundamental
disagreement over terminology. A differing interpretation of outputs, outcomes and
impact had meant an irreconcilable seismic rift had developed between them.
The manager felt they had done something wrong. He asked, ‘Maybe we do need
to change our meaningful, board endorsed, publicly available evaluation framework
so that our impacts can be swapped for outcomes and we can do evaluation properly?’
My response was, Arggghhhhhh . . . Nooooooooo! Stop right there! You need to read
“The Great Non-profit Evaluation Reboot: A New Approach Every Staff Member Can
Understand”.
The author of this book, Dr Elena Harman, earned her PhD in evaluation from
Claremont Graduate University and studied under professors Tarek Azzam, Tiffany
Berry, Stewart Donaldson, and Michael Scriven. She has worked as an internal evalu-
ator at the Colorado Health Foundation and is presently the CEO and Founder of
Vantage Evaluation, supporting how non-profits think about and use evaluation.
Harman’s practical experience is evident throughout the book which contains a pleth-
ora of suggestions and stories of how non-profits have applied evaluation in practical
ways.
Harman achieves her intention of supporting staff in nonprofits to engage with
evaluation in this insightful, practical, easy to read, humorous, step-by-step guide to
evaluation. The book is structured in four parts. In Part 1, Harman focuses on the rea-
sons why there is a disconnect between evaluation and non-profits. Part 2 outlines her
871085EVJ0010.1177/1035719X19871085Evaluation Journal of AustralasiaBook review
book-review2019
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