Blog Summary:
1. Prevention success is a change in people, not a count of events, so track what changed.
2. Report what you delivered (outputs) and what changed (outcomes) separately.
3. Ask the same pre and post questions every time, and follow up 6 to 12 months later.
4. Be honest about what self-reported confidence can and can't prove.
5. Keep prevention data in the same system as your crisis data so reporting doesn't take weeks.
Reading Time: (6 Minutes)
Crisis work is easy to count. A call came in, a referral went out, a client got support. Prevention is different, because success is often something that didn't happen. If you run school workshops, youth programs, or community events, you've probably felt the pressure to show funders what all that effort actually changed.
We talk with organizations doing this work, and the problem is rarely a lack of effort. It's that nobody set up a way to capture the change while the program was running. By the time a funder asks, the only thing left to report is how many sessions were held. Here's how we'd approach it instead.
Why prevention is harder to measure
Researchers have pointed out that sexual violence prevention programs are widely delivered and studied, but few have clearly shown that they prevent violence. That isn't a reason to skip measurement. It's a reason to plan it carefully. We'd encourage you to treat measurement as part of the program itself, not as paperwork at the end.
It also helps to be realistic about the timeline. A workshop can change what someone knows and how confident they feel within an hour. Changes in behaviour, or in a school or community's culture, take much longer. Your measurement plan should reflect both.
Start with outputs and outcomes
The first thing we'd do is separate two kinds of numbers.
Outputs are what you did: 24 workshops, 600 students reached, three community events held. Outcomes are what changed: students who feel more confident stepping in when they see harm, a shift in attitudes toward consent, a new partnership that came out of an event.
Funders want to see both, but outputs alone only show that you were busy. Outcomes show that the work mattered. If your current reports only list outputs, that's the easiest place to improve.
Decide what data you want to collect
Don't try to measure everything. We'd suggest choosing three to five changes your program is designed to create. These could be knowledge, attitudes, skills and confidence, behaviour, or community-level change like new partnerships or policies.
Then check that each one connects logically to what you actually teach. If a workshop covers bystander intervention, then confidence to intervene is a sensible thing to measure. If it doesn't connect to your content, drop it. A short list you can collect consistently is worth more than a long one you abandon halfway through the year.
This list matters because everything else is built from it: your survey questions, and the reports you'll pull at the end.
Use the same questions, before and after
Pre- and post-program surveys compare what participants know or believe before a program with what they report afterward. The comparison only works if the questions stay the same, so write them once and reuse them for every session. This also lets you combine results across schools, groups, and years instead of starting over each time.
You don't need a complicated survey to get started. A few consistent questions can help you understand what participants learned, whether their confidence increased, and where more support or education might be needed.
Keep the responses organized so you can compare results over time and include those findings in your program reports.
Plan your follow-up before the program starts
Immediate results are encouraging, but funders also want to know if the change lasted. A follow-up survey 6 to 12 months after the program is a common way to check.
This is the step most organizations skip, usually because no one remembers to schedule it. Put the follow-up date in your plan from the start, and decide who is responsible for it. Even a small follow-up sample tells you more than none at all.
A quick example
Say your team delivers a four-session healthy relationships program in local high schools. Here's how we'd set it up.
Before the first session, students answer five questions about consent and how confident they feel stepping in when something seems wrong. After the last session, they answer the same five. Six months later, you send a short follow-up to the teachers or students who agreed to be contacted.
Your report can then show how many sessions you ran (output), how responses changed between the first and last session (outcome), and whether those changes held after six months (lasting outcome). That's a clear story, and it took three short surveys.
Be honest about what the data shows
Many bystander program evaluations measure what people say they would do, not what they actually do. We'd recommend describing your results that way. Saying that most participants reported more confidence to intervene is accurate and still persuasive. Claiming it proves behaviour change is a promise you can't back up, and funders notice.
Being upfront about limits also builds trust. A report that says what you measured, how you measured it, and what you plan to improve reads as more credible than one that claims too much.
What Canadian funders are paying attention to
At the federal level, a mid-term evaluation of Canada's GBV Strategy recommended improving its logic model and performance measurement framework, including the tools used to collect data. The National Action Plan also calls for measurement that is trauma and violence-informed and, wherever possible, broken down by factors like gender identity, age, race, disability, and geography.
Our advice is to be ready to explain how your activities lead to your intended outcomes, and to show who your programs reach. Always check your own funder's reporting template first, since requirements differ from one funder to the next.
What to do with your results
Data that sits in a folder doesn't help anyone. We'd suggest three simple habits.
Review your results every quarter, so you can adjust a session that isn't landing. Share a short summary with your board and your partners, such as schools or community groups, so they can see the impact. And save the strongest results and any participant feedback you have permission to share, because they'll be ready the next time you write a grant application.
Common mistakes we'd avoid
- Changing the questions between sessions. You lose the ability to compare results.
- Collecting too much. Long surveys lower response rates and burn out facilitators.
- Skipping the follow-up. Without it, you can't say whether the change lasted.
- Mixing up outputs and outcomes. A full room isn't the same as a changed attitude.
- Leaving prevention data in a separate spreadsheet. It's the first thing to get lost when staff change.
One platform for prevention and crisis work
Many organizations track their helpline in one place and their education work somewhere else. That makes reporting slow, and it hides the full picture of what you do.
Izzy supports both sides of your work. You can run your helpline and case management in the same platform where you plan your education programs and collect survey feedback. Our Education Event Planning, Form Management, Dashboard, and Reporting tools are built to help with that.
If prevention is a big part of your work, you might also like our stories on BLOOM365's youth violence prevention model and PreventSA's work.
Common questions
What's the difference between an output and an outcome?
An output is what your program delivered, like workshops or attendees. An outcome is the change that resulted, like improved knowledge, attitudes, or confidence.
When should we follow up with participants?
A common approach is 6 to 12 months after the program.
Do small organizations need a full evaluation?
No. Start with three to five outcomes, the same questions each time, and a regular check-in.
Can Izzy help us set up our surveys?
Yes. Tell us what you want the survey to say and what data you want to collect, and we'll set it up. It can be added to the Izzy widget on your website, and the responses feed into reports.
How many survey questions should we ask?
As few as you can while still covering your outcomes. Five to ten is a reasonable starting point.
If you'd like to see how this could work for your programs, book a demo.