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Evaluation and the social services sector: Imagine Canada report

Posted on September 18, 2019September 18, 2019 by Jody Paterson

There’s much to reflect on in Imagine Canada’s new series of reports on evaluation in the Canadian non-profit sector. Social services was one of four sectors surveyed. (Interesting fact: With 15,200 social service non-profits active in Canada, we’re the second-largest sub-sector next to religious organizations.)

Each of the short reports explores a specific sub-sector and how they measure and evaluate their work. Imagine Canada looked at how measurement and evaluation results are being used among charities, how we talk with their funders about evaluation, and what the enablers and barriers to this work are. Here’s the eight-page report on the social services sector.

The report on our sector found that a significant majority of social services charities see a need for evaluation in order to know they are achieving their objectives, “and most see sufficient value in the activity to justify the resources they devote to it. However, most also believe the data they collect is not used to its fullest potential.”

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“As with other types of charities, social services charities tend to place the greatest emphasis on evaluating more fundamental aspects of their work, such as outputs, quality and outcomes. Strong majorities of social services charities measure these aspects of their work,” noted the report. “Much smaller proportions evaluate either their impact or the return on investment of their work. Social services charities differ from other sub-sectors in emphasizing output measurement and de-emphasizing evaluation of impact and return on investment.”

Explore measurement & evaluation practices from the following sub-sectors: 

  • Health Charities
  • Arts, Culture & Recreation Charities
  • Education & Research Charities 
  • Social Services Charities 
  • The Role of Funders
Posted in BC Social Reports, Charity sector news, Uncategorized

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