Annabel Jackson Associates
The Priory, 54 Lyncombe Hill, Bath, BA2 4PJ, UK, Tel: 44-(0)1225-446614; email: ajassocs_aol.com
About Us
Annabel Jackson is an evaluator with twenty five years experience, twenty years running Annabel Jackson Associates. She has a BSc, an MPhil, and an MBA specialising in entrepreneurship. Her team includes specialists in the arts, small business development, community development, social enterprise, international aid and regeneration, as well as 10 interviewers. We specialise in producing and implementing practical evaluation and performance measurement systems that contribute to strategic planning and organisational development. We have pioneered work on outcome evaluation within a learning approach.
What others say about us:
"AJA has an ability to very quickly understand the needs of an organisation. Imaginative and innovative. Very effective at engaging individuals and organisations." Diane Hebb, The Arts Council of Wales
"Over the course of two projects, AJA has made a real contribution to the development of the AHRC's approach to impact evaluation." Chris Walker, AHRC.
"I first worked with Annabel at Community Fund, and found her approach refreshingly enthusiastic in what can be a dry area generally. I have worked with her on a number of issues relating to the DPOWMFs spend out strategy, and always found her a beacon of clarity in unpacking complex issues and re-framing them in ways that allow different audiences to grasp the tasks at hand and the big picture..Annabel always knows the right questions to ask, and brings a good balance of authoritativeness and flexibility to evaluation issues." Samantha Rennie, The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund
"Amazing depth and breadth of experience that can help a wide range of organizations. Her passion for evaluation is felt by all who meet and work with her. It is the combination of her experience and passion that enable arts leaders to love evaluation rather than fear it." Russell Willis Taylor, National Arts Strategies, Washington
"She is very quick at understanding the dynamics of organisations and in understanding how complex are the drivers behind change. In our case, AJA has also played a valuable role in helping us build a stronger relationship with the funder of the project - through explaining and interpreting our work in the documentation she has produced." advocacy organisation
"AJA has excellent expertise and conceptualization skills. They are quick to respond to new work priorities and clients needs." Delphine Guillemoteau, RISE
Evaluation
A Learning Approach We have specialised in, and promoted, the learning style of evaluation for over 15 years. This respects the accountability requirements of funders, but centres evaluation firstly around the organisations own learning needs. The learning approach provides a narrative structure across the organisation, which links different projects and departments into a joint exploration of key questions for the organisation. Each evaluation report contributes to and deepens this learning journey rather than in isolation in its own intellectual space. The learning approach places formal evaluations and enquiries within the context of internal knowledge, including tacit knowledge from staff and partners.
We have developed specific tools for fostering, developing and documenting learning. These include learning seminars and learning frameworks.
A Participative Approach All of our work is carried out with a participative approach. We are strongly committed to demystifying evaluation rather than making clients dependent on us. Our work includes:
We often have a long term relationship with our clients. For example in the last year we have been involved in strategic thinking, writing evaluation plans, developing evaluation methods, running training on evaluation and carrying out evaluations on an ongoing basis for CABE, Arts Council England, Architecture Centre Network, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, The Princess Diana Memorial Fund, and the Gatsby Foundation. We have a series of long term contracts from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and the Princess Diana Memorial Fund to build evaluation capacity in grantee organisations (all third sector) such as ADFAM, Forward Thinking and the Prison Reform Trust. We also have a series of multi-year relationships with arts organisations to support their evaluation in a participative way.
A Develepmental Approach Our role is to build your capacity to empower your board, staff and managers to think evaluatively, to integrate enquiry into their everyday work and direct evaluation towards questions that are most important strategically for your organisation. This can include group training and/or individual mentoring. One of the benefits of a developmental approach is that it makes evaluation lean and cost effective.
A Theory Of Change Approach We see conceptualisation as the essential first stage in any evaluation. Conceptualisation consists in using logic models or systems diagrams to understand the connections within a project or programme: its assumptions about cause and effect.
A theory of change approach provides the structure to define customised and meaningful outcomes and outcome measures for individual projects and organisations.
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Innovation tempus ut aliquet eu blandit vel magna Fusce nec orci eget tellus sodales vehicula Maecenas condimentum lectus vel eros Donec id felis et metus lacinia gokjwoe sdfde fd erisdw kso nec doni. Donec id felis et metus lacini id felis et metus lacinia .lit Fusce justo metus tempus ut aliquet eu blandit vel magna Fusce nec orci eget tellus sodales vehicula Maecenas condimentum lectus vel eros Donec id felis et metus lacinia gokjwoe sdfde fd erisdw kso nec doni. Donec id felis et metus lacini id felis et metus lacinia .lit Fusce justo metus tempus ut aliquet eu blandit vel magna Fusce nec orci eget tellus sodales vehicula Maecenas condimentum lectus vel eros Donec id felis et metus lacinia gokjwoe sdfde fd erisdw kso nec doni. Donec id felis et metus lacini id felis et metus lacinia .lit Fusce justo metus tempus ut aliquet eu blandit vel magna Fusce nec orci eget tellus sodales vehicula Maecenas condimentum lectus vel eros Donec id felis et metus lacinia gokjwoe sdfde fd erisdw kso nec doni. Donec id felis et metus lacini id felis et metus lacinia
Getting Started tempus ut aliquet eu blandit vel magna Fusce nec orci eget tellus sodales vehicula Maecenas condimentum lectus vel eros Donec id felis et metus lacinia gokjwoe sdfde fd erisdw kso nec doni. Donec id felis et metus lacini id felis et metus lacinia .lit Fusce justo metus tempus ut aliquet eu blandit vel magna Fusce nec orci eget tellus sodales vehicula Maecenas condimentum lectus vel eros Donec id felis et metus lacinia gokjwoe sdfde fd erisdw kso nec doni. Donec id felis et metus lacini id felis et metus lacinia .lit Fusce justo metus tempus ut aliquet eu blandit vel magna Fusce nec orci eget tellus sodales vehicula Maecenas condimentum lectus vel eros Donec id felis et metus lacinia gokjwoe sdfde fd erisdw kso nec doni. Donec id felis et metus lacini id felis et metus lacinia .lit Fusce justo metus tempus ut aliquet eu blandit vel magna Fusce nec orci eget tellus sodales vehicula Maecenas condimentum lectus vel eros Donec id felis et metus lacinia gokjwoe sdfde fd erisdw kso nec doni. Donec id felis et metus lacini id felis et metus lacinia
Performance Measurement
Our Work We have designed performance measurement systems for a large number of public, private and third sector partnerships and organisations.
Benefits Performance measurement systems offer many benefits to organisations:
Challenges However, in practice, performance measurement systems often fail to meet their potential because they:
Principles Of Good Practice In Performance Measurement We design performance measurement systems taking a systematic, embedded approach using these principles:
Organisational Development & Mentoring
Strategic Planning In 2006 we carried out a large scale survey of small voluntary sector organisations in the UK to find out about their use of and understanding of strategic planning processes. We devised a methodology to survey strategic planning that took account of the conceptual and practical difficulties (we wanted to know about strategic thinking not just the presence of a written plan; terms used in strategic planning have passed into common usage and the common usage is not always correct; organisations might to reluctant to admit to not doing strategic planning etc).
This produced an extremely interesting data set, which NCVO and the Performance Hub wanted to use to improve strategic planning. We therefore took a support package for small voluntary sector organisations:
Business Reviews We have ongoing relationships to carry out business reviews for the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, and other funders. Our approach is to use evaluative thinking to lend precision and focus to a frank but entirely sympathetic discussion about organisational challenges and appropriate action plans.
We have developed specific tools for:
Mentoring We are increasingly employed as mentors to help managers and leaders. We use evaluative thinking and our knowledge of how organisations work to provide a structure and context for you to reflect on your work, test ideas using evaluation techniques, and translate findings into action.
Teaching
UK We offer three short courses, each lasting a day:
Please contact us for information about the next dates for our training ajassocs_aol.com
In addition, we can provide customised, in-house training on evaluation or performance measurement.
United States In the United States, Annabel Jackson teaches an evaluation course to arts organisations for National Arts Strategies. This course was devised with, and is delivered with, Hallie Preskill, former President of the American Evaluation Association.
Specialisms
Evaluating Arts Organisations & Projects Our work includes:
The arts have a reputation for being difficult to evaluate because:
In practice, evaluating the arts is no more difficult than other areas of activity because:
This file provides an introduction to evaluation and standard questionnaires for arts organisations to track their achievements.
Evaluating Capacity Building
Capacity building programmes present challenges for evaluators because:
We have developed a series of capacity building diagnostic tools for different aspects of organisational development and different types of third sector organisations. These are based on the following principles:
Our approach to evaluating organisational capacity building is highly beneficial to the evaluated organisations. Indeed it is often seen as part of the capacity building process itself.
Evaluating Training & Learning We have carried out many evaluations of training and learning for public, private and third sector clients.
There are four elements to evaluating training and learning:
Perhaps 80% of training organisations measure Reaction, but fewer than 20% measure Learning, Behaviour or Results.
Our approach is to measure Reaction, but also to track specific outcomes from training, including the value of the operating principles on which the course was designed. Our work often includes follow up interviews to track individual and organisational impact long after the course. As we deliver training ourselves we can provide practice guidance on how to fine tune course design and delivery, taking account of the inherent challenges involved in training courses.
Evaluating Advocacy Advocacy evaluation is special because of:
Other problems of complexity, time lags, different stakeholder perspectives and difficulty in attributing cause, have been attached to advocacy evaluation but actually occur widely in social programme evaluation. It is arguable that the need to understand networks, relations and tactics applies also to other social programmes - and increased understanding of these softer aspects might even been seen as a gift from advocacy evaluation to wider social programme evaluation. Advocacy has drawn attention to the need to understand these aspects because it lacks the easy outputs that are available for evaluation of service delivery. Relationships are processes but also to some extent outputs from the work.
We have a number of long term contracts to evaluate and catalogue the learning from advocacy supported by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, the Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fund and other funders: these are in drug policy, the environment, prison reform, social enterprise and business advocacy. Part of our work is to develop concepts to help understand how different advocacy strategies and tactics work in different circumstances. This is in addition to using methods to measure relationship development and capacity building.
Evaluating Social Enterprise We have carried out a range of assignments including:
Evaluating Aid We have carried out work in Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda. We are also retained by the Gatsby Foundation to oversee programme and project level evaluation. This includes work in developing and applying new outcome based methods and building evaluative capacity in the grant holder organisations.
Evaluating Managed Workspace & Incubators Annabel Jackson has carried out a large number of evaluations and feasibilities studies into managed workspace and incubators. Annabel is the author of "Managing Workspace: Case Studies of Good Practice in Urban Regeneration" (1987) HMSO. She started her career in managed workspace as the Marketing Director and then Divisional Director of Development for London Industrial plc (now Workspace), one of the largest managed workspace companies in London. On workspace evaluation projects, Annabel works with David Irwin, the founder Chief Executive of the Small Business Service in the UK. www.david.irwin.org
The challenges in evaluating managed workspace and incubators are:
Evaluating Regeneration We carried out a large amount of work on early regeneration programmes - rural and urban - and have also been involved in more recent efforts to improve the quality of regeneration. We have produced evaluation methodologies for:
There is an enormous amount of information on good practice in regeneration. The challenge, which each of these organisations addresses in various ways, is how to help individuals and projects on the ground to understand and implement good practice.
The challenges in evaluating regeneration programmes are that:
