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Value for Money Workshop with Julian King - 6th and 13th August

Making difficult decisions about the allocation of limited resources is a persistent challenge for public services. During periods of fiscal constraint, the pressure to make wise choices intensifies. While there is strong demand for return-on-investment indicators - such as estimating the social value created for every dollar invested - these metrics provide only a partial view of value-for-money, especially in complex social settings.

The Value for Investment (VfI) approach addresses this challenge by integrating insights from both economics and evaluation. VfI uses evaluative reasoning, mixed methods, and stakeholder participation to deliver a more nuanced, robust assessment - one that reflects the complexity of real-world social investments.

We are pleased to invite you to join Julian King for an introductory workshop on the VfI approach. In this session, you will learn how to:

Pose and answer critical questions about good resource use to create social, cultural, environmental, and/or economic value.
Define value-for-money in the context of specific policies or programmes.
Select and justify a combination of methods from evaluation and economics.
Make robust evaluative judgements and communicate findings clearly to decision-makers.

This interactive workshop is not designed to make you an economist; other training opportunities exist for those seeking in-depth knowledge of methods such as social cost-benefit analysis or social return on investment. Instead, this session provides an overarching framework and practical skills to guide evaluation design, the savvy use of qualitative, quantitative, and economic methods, and the synthesis of mixed methods evidence to reach and report clear judgements.

While the workshop focuses on providing better answers to value-for-money questions, the rubrics-based skills you will acquire are transferable to any evaluation context.

This workshop is ideal for evaluators, policy analysts, government officials, NGO staff, development practitioners, and consultants (whether novice, intermediate, or advanced) seeking a practical, evidence-based approach that is used worldwide to assess value-for-money in complex policies and social investments.

Julian King is an Auckland-based public policy consultant. His professional background includes over 20 years evaluating policies and programmes in high, middle and low-income countries. Julian developed the Value for Investment approach through doctoral research. He received the 2021 Australian Evaluation Society (AES) Evaluation System Award in recognition of the contribution made through the VfI approach. Julian is a member of the Kinnect Group, an Associate of Oxford Policy Management, a member of Verian Group's Centre for Value for Money (VfM), an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne and a University Fellow at the Northern Institute. He is a member of ANZEA and the evaluation societies of Australia, UK, USA, and Europe. Julian specialises in evaluation and VfI capability development.

Posted in News, ANZEA Event, Workshop, professional development event, Professional Development Events; Posted 2 days ago By Chanel Partridge Less than a minute to read

Zane Mather

Kai & Korero Session

Wednesday 25th June 12-1pm

Free Webinar presented by Zane Mather

Zane Mather will share some reflections on working as tangata tiriti in the rangahau and arotake (Research and evaluation) spaces – the joys and the challenges of working in partnership. He will talk about how he thinks about his role and positioning, comfort (and intentional discomfort) across contexts, as well as providing a safe space for a kōrero about experiences others have had in navigating this space.

Zane is Principal Advisor Rangahau Māori in Te Tari Aroktake Mātauranga at the Education Review Office. He has worked across ERO, Te Puni Kōkiri and Treasury – largely with a focus on system-level evaluation in education settings. His interest in working in the rangahau and arotake space was sparked by doing some mahi on the teaching of te reo Māori in English-medium schools, which kickstarted an ongoing reo journey, and a passionate interest in the revitalisation of te reo Māori. His academic background includes Philosophy, Linguistics and Religious Studies, as well as (in a belated nod to employability) Social Sector Research Evaluation.

Posted in News, ANZEA Event; Posted 10 days ago By Chanel Partridge Less than a minute to read

Evaluation Fundamentals 102 - 21st & 28th August

Keep learning about what evaluation is and how to do it in this second Evaluation Basics course, where you’ll learn more about how to design and deliver a robust evaluation.

Posted in News, Professional Development Events, Workshop, ANZEA Event; Tagged News; Posted 36 days ago By Chanel Partridge Less than a minute to read

Evaluation Fundamentals 101 - 23 & 29th July

Learn what evaluation is, when it can be used, and when it's useful. Discover what some of the essential tools and skills are for your evaluation toolkit.

Posted in News, ANZEA Event, Professional Development Events, Workshop; Posted 36 days ago By Chanel Partridge Less than a minute to read

Kai & Kōrero 16th April 2025: Inclusive evaluation: working with disabled peoples

We are excited to have a date locked in for this event after it was postponed in 2024. Join us for this presentation by Juvena Jalal.

Posted in News; Tagged News; Posted 6 months ago By Tess Laurenson Less than a minute to read

Kai & Kōrero 12th March 2025: Social investment and the role of evaluation

Social Investment and the Role of Evaluation

Presented by Dr Zachary Penman

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81926952978?pwd=L1chYhIvmcBbI35EiVNjqMGtWISbYa.1

Meeting ID: 819 2695 2978

Passcode: 881501

A webinar in which Zach will discuss the latest iteration of social investment and the anticipated role of evaluation. He will talk about how social investment is envisaged as an approach to targeting social interventions and improving local and regional commissioning. This is to better serve, and achieve better outcomes for, individuals, families, and whānau living complex lives. He will then talk about how data and evidence will support social investment, focusing on the types of evaluative evidence that we will need.

Zachary Penman is a Principal Economist at the Social Investment Agency who specialises in quantitative social science methodologies and evaluation. He has interests in measurement and causality and a takes a methodologically and evidentially pluralist approach to evaluation. He is particularly interested in culture-specific and inter-epistemic challenges in these areas. For example, Zach collaborated with Tūtū Kākā Consultants (Finley Ngarangi Johnson) to develop Te Pikitia a te Whānau, a kaupapa Māori psychometric tool to measure whānau wellbeing, for E Tū Whānau.

Zach has been involved with ANZEA since becoming a public servant in 2020 and previously presented on the topic of social investment at the 2024 ANZEA conference.

Posted in News; Tagged News; Posted 6 months ago By Tess Laurenson 1 Minute(s) to read

ANZEA Special Interest Group: New and Emerging Evaluators

Connect online with new and emerging evaluators!

Posted in News; Tagged News; Posted 6 months ago By Tess Laurenson Less than a minute to read

Kai & Kōrero 11th Feb 2025: Lessons learned from developing a monitoring and learning framework.New Blog Post

Join us for the first kai & kōrero session of 2025

Posted in News; Tagged News; Posted 6 months ago By Tess Laurenson Less than a minute to read

8th &15th May 2025: Designing surveys that people will trust - an Online Workshop with Adrian Field

Surveys are often a key element of evaluation practice, but are increasingly challenged by the multitudes of surveys simultaneously in the field, each fighting for the attention of their respondents.

Register for our professional development workshop where you will interactively learn about the promise and perils of survey design, have opportunities to design and test survey questions, and explore options for implementing surveys.

Posted in Professional Development Events, ANZEA Event, Workshop, News; Posted 12 months ago By Tess Laurenson 1 Minute(s) to read