Communicating findings

In this step you will learn how to effectively communicate the findings of evaluation to different stakeholder groups.

Evaluation findings are a powerful catalyst to elicit practical, strategic and systemic change. To achieve this, you need to carefully target your communication of the findings to leverage optimal value and impact. This requires you to explore who your intended audience is, what they need to know, and how you might best package and convey the information to them. Let’s look at each of these in more detail:

Who?

Evaluation can often yield large amounts of data and insights. Not all of it will be of value to everyone. Some audience types may have specific information needs or agendas which require a bespoke approach. Others may have shared needs and agendas that you can combine into a single communication format. The first step in communicating your findings is to identify those who would benefit from the information, and why.

• Who are the people most likely to want to access this information?
• What is their status (e.g academic, cultural sector practitioner, funder, lay person)?
• What might they need the information for [e.g policy making, decision making, advocacy, strategic development, process improvements, proving outcomes have been met]?

What? 

When communicating your evaluation findings, it’s important to target the right information to the right audience. Distinguish between what is ‘useful’ and what is just ‘interesting’ by adopting the audience point of view. You can then edit the information to ensure it has direct, applicable value. This will improve the chances of your information being read, processed and acted on.

• What are the priorities of this person in relation to the subject area?
• Which information is directly relevant to this person’s needs or agenda?
• What might they use this information for?
• What value could it bring?

How? 

How you write the information will impact directly on the perceived relevance to the reader. Write in industry jargon and you may alienate a person who does not come from that sector. Too informal, and the information may not have the weight required to influence upwards. Legibility and accessibility are also important considerations to ensure the process of reading the information is as easy and frictionless as possible.

• What tone is most appropriate for this person?
• What kind of language would the reader respond best to?
• How can I make it easy to understand and access?

Presenting information

How you present the information impacts directly on its ability to grab attention, encourage engagement and support meaning-making. Your key goals are that it is accessible, immediate and compelling. Different kinds of information lend themselves to different formats. 

• Hard Data: This comes in the form of precise numbers, metrics and statistics that translate well into visuals such as graphs and pie charts that can be easily incorporated into a report. Infographics are a more creative and visual way of condensing key information into ‘bite-size portions’ that command attention and are easy to process.
• Soft Data: This information is more descriptive and qualitative and can often be narrative based. Story-telling is an excellent way of conveying the flow of what happened, key moments and the big ideas that emerged. Soft data such as sentiments, observations and impressions can be converted into infographics that are more text-based than numbers based, though these may not be able to convey the richness of the whole story.

Remember not to bombard the reader with lots of information. Make sure they can locate the information they need quickly, and that the tone, content, readability and language matches the needs of the reader.

Questions to inform an evaluation story

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Data visualisation 

Take a look at some examples of data visualisations that demonstrate how you might present evaluation findings with clarity and immediacy. You will also find some useful resources here that will provide you with more information on creating infographics.

Workbook: Communicating findings

Now that you’ve gained a better understanding of how to effectively communicate the findings of evaluation to different stakeholder groups, it is time for you to tailor communication to the specific needs and priorities of your stakeholder groups.

Go to Activity 6: Communicating findings in your Evaluation Workbook, and complete the activity by following the prompts provided.

Once you have completed this activity, return to this page to join the discussion.

Time to reflect

• How useful did you find this exercise?
• What did you learn about your stakeholders?
• What did you find most challenging about this exercise?
• What did you learn about your evaluation?
• Were some elements more or less useful than you expected when looking at it from the stakeholder perspective

Share and discuss your thoughts with other learners in the Comments section. Try to respond to at least two other posts made by other learners.