Course Overview

Budgeting, legislation, and grantmaking decisions often happen under tight time, information, and capacity constraints. As a result, decision makers rely heavily on evidence for policy decisions but rarely have time to review lengthy reports or complex evaluation findings. Instead, they need concise, credible evidence that clearly communicates impact, value, and practical implications.

This course focuses on how evaluators, applied researchers, and evidence builders can design and communicate evidence that decision makers can use. In practice, this means aligning evaluation questions, study designs, and reporting approaches with real policy and funding decisions at federal and state levels, as well as within foundations and industry.

Through applied examples and discussion, participants will learn practical strategies to highlight program impact, cost effectiveness, and return on investment. In addition, they will learn how to translate findings into formats that resonate with time-constrained leaders.

By the end of the session, participants will better understand how to structure evaluations and communicate findings so that evidence informs policy decisions and funding choices.

What You Will Learn

Participants will learn how to identify common barriers that limit the use of evidence. They will also learn how to align evaluation work with real policy and funding decisions.

The course then explores how evaluation questions, study design, and reporting formats can make program impact, cost effectiveness, and return on investment more visible and meaningful to decision makers. For example, participants will examine how small shifts in framing can change how evidence is received and used.

By the end of the course, participants will be better equipped to translate evaluation findings into clear, concise decision-making materials. As a result, they will be able to increase the practical influence of their work.

Course Format

This course is delivered either as a one-module live, instructor-led virtual session (3 hours) or as a half-day in-person workshop. The session combines short presentations, applied examples, and facilitated discussion.

Participants will review real-world examples of policy-relevant evidence products and explore practical approaches for framing evaluation findings in ways that resonate with policy and funding leaders.

Who Should Attend

This course is ideal for:

• Program evaluators and applied researchers
• Evidence and learning officers
• Policy analysts and research managers
• Performance-focused staff in government agencies, nonprofits, foundations, and research organizations

Prerequisites

Participants should have basic familiarity with evaluation, applied research, or policy analysis. No advanced technical background is required.