You may have already considered who your stakeholders might be during the planning process for your project. However it is worth reviewing these during the evaluation stage as these people will be the audience for your evaluation report.
Sometimes the key stakeholders of evaluations are categorised into three groups:
those who are involved – project teams
those who are affected – intended beneficiaries
those who use evaluation findings – development agencies and funding bodies
Another method you can use to identify who your potential stakeholders are is to consider the potential benefits of your project.
These groupings are not mutually exclusive as, for example, the primary users of evaluation findings are likely to be the project teams. But if we want to ensure that broad consideration has been given to the identification of stakeholders you may want to give priority to those stakeholders who:
can increase the credibility of the evaluation
have responsibility for the implementation of the activities that will be affected by the outcomes of your project
will advocate or authorise changes that the evaluation may recommend
will fund or authorise the continuation of the project
Smaller projects may not have the resource or capacity to address all of these factors and some may also be less relevant but they are all worthy of initial consideration.
Follow this link to access a stakeholder analysis template
To assist with stakeholder engagement and commitment it may be worth asking the following questions as part of the initial stakeholder analysis:
What interests you about this project?
What is important to you about this project?
What would you like this project to achieve?
What are the essential evaluation questions for you?
How will you use the results of the evaluation?
What resources (for example time, evaluation expertise, access to respondents and policymakers) might you contribute to this evaluation effort?