Measuring Success

Monitoring and evaluating is vital to understanding the impact of emergency aid regardless of the size or scope of your efforts. The traditional evaluation best practices apply: Lay out a set of agreed-upon metrics, capture critical benchmarks, collect data to routinely analyze against those benchmarks and gain a solid understanding of the trends and patterns.

Gathering and studying data to directly gauge the success of the program is a good foundation. Beyond that, information collected about students using any emergency aid support can help an institution better understand the needs of its students and identify additional strategies to support their success. Institutions can collect and analyze data on current and incoming students to help campus leaders strengthen their planning and allocation of emergency aid resources. That information can also help ensure that protocols and intervention strategies are in place to inform potential recipients about the available resources.

A mature emergency aid program that is available and utilized by students should generate regular quantitative and qualitative data so institutions can analyze program metrics, trends, and patterns to assess the impact the program has on student success. This data and information can serve as a valuable tool for informing the delivery of emergency aid at other institutions. Of course, when it comes to analyzing and sharing student data, it’s important to strike the right balance between collection and privacy. Systems should be put in place to safeguard student data.

Data are only valuable when used. Campus leaders and stakeholders should meet regularly to discuss the progress of the emergency aid work. These information sharing sessions can create a shared understanding of the data among appropriate campus staff and help determine next steps, as well as support the revision of processes and policies if needed. These sessions are also an excellent opportunity for celebrating success.