Date: Wednesday, January 7, 2026
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
Hello! I am Pearl Avari, PhD, a researcher and evaluator at the University of Kansas Center for Community Health & Development. As an evaluator, I sometimes wonder: What good is evaluation if no one uses it? Too often, valuable findings end up in PDFs or PowerPoints, as just checklists completed. But evaluation is beyond just documentation, it can prompt dialogue, shape policy, and transform communities. The way we share findings makes all the difference!
Data tables and numbers are necessary but may also fall short of shifting systems. What prompts change is when findings are disseminated in ways that demand attention and make it impossible to ignore. Community member stories on of children playing on residential streets among traffic speaks more urgently than a bar chart of “inadequate recreational facilities.” A live dashboard reporting disparities in healthcare services compels stakeholders to reckon with inequities in real time.The question is not simply “How do I share results?” but “How do I share them so stakeholders and leaders cannot walk away unchanged?”
Photovoice is a powerful method that shifts who defines “evidence.” Participants use photography to capture lived realities and share narratives that explain their meaning. Through collaborative dialogue, the result becomes more than visual data, it is community-driven interpretation.Consider an evaluation of housing accessibility programs. Residents’ photographs of moldy walls, drafty rooms without insulation, or unsafe stairwells tell a story that numbers alone cannot. When those images are displayed in a public gallery for stakeholders, policymakers, and neighbors, they provoke uncomfortable but necessary conversations. A report might describe “poor housing quality,” but a wall of lived realities makes that abstract phrase impossible to ignore. Photovoice transforms findings into a moral imperative for change.
Organizations like Photovoice Worldwide: https://www.photovoiceworldwide.com/ & Photovoice: https://photovoice.org/ offer accessible guides for designing and facilitating projects.
Interactive dashboards give stakeholders the opportunity to explore data on their own terms. I’ve seen dashboards highlight hidden patterns like socioeconomic gaps in program participation, which in traditional written reports get forgotten. When school administration, nonprofit sector, or policymakers can filter, zoom, and compare, they begin asking their own questions. This stakeholder-led discovery leads to the most powerful collaborative conversations.
Tableau Public: https://www.tableau.com/community/public and Power BI are creative resources that can make findings dynamic and interactive.
Story maps can be transformative! For example, a food security program might use maps to display areas with limited grocery stores. The data alone is compelling, but becomes much stronger when maps are paired with community stories. Suddenly, what looks like a geographic gap reveals structural barriers that shape daily life.
Esri’s StoryMaps: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/ is a great story mapping tool.
The most powerful lesson I’ve learned is that findings don’t always create change on their own, it’s the accompanying stories that do. A dataset can show disparities, but it is the narrative supporting the finding that makes people care enough to act. Evaluation results disseminated impactfully can transform “evaluation findings” into urgent calls for justice. As evaluators, we can go beyond analyzing data and help communities tell their truths in ways that reach decision-makers.
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