Sample 4 : Final Report - Outline for Narrative Summary 

Have you provided the necessary information to evaluate your project according to your performance objectives as written in the original proposal, application or program description and its addendum, if any? Don't forget to include the statistical information that measures the accomplishment of those objectives. What indicators did you use? (For example: "After participating in the Mother Goose on the Loose program for six weeks, 50 out of 66 parents, or 75%, reported when surveyed that they were reading to their children daily. At sign up for the program, only 40% of these same parents reported reading daily.")

Carefully estimate how many different people this project served counting persons only once even if they used the service more than once. Explain how you made this estimate. It should not be the total population of your service area or community, or the "potential" audience you envisioned at the start of the project - just the people actually served by the project.

How many, and what kind of, programs were offered during the entire project year? What was the attendance on the average? Total attendance? For whom were the programs intended? Who were the speakers/presenters? What were the topics? What were the evaluation results?

What is the number of materials purchased, i.e., how many books, periodical subscriptions, videos, audiocassettes, etc.?

What were the circulation figures (summaries only, please)? What amount or percentage increase did you observe? How about new registrations?

List all the equipment you purchased.

How many different publicity pieces did you create or purchase? List them by type. How many of them did you distribute? In what ways did you distribute them? How many kits, information packets, bibliographies, bookmarks, brochures, or reading lists did you create? Attach two copies of each (but only one copy of the entire report) so that we may use one for "show and tell" at training sessions while keeping the other in your file.

Who were your cooperating agencies, institutions, and individuals consulted? Have you formed stronger partnerships as part of the project? Have you reason to think they will continue?

By how much did your fill rate on requests or reference inquiries increase?

What have been the preliminary results of this project overall? Include human interest stories that may illustrate results. This is where you should provide anecdotes about the project and individual quotes regarding the project impact.

What project elements were completed? Who did them? What were the results?

Most importantly: outcomes! Most of what we've asked so far are examples of your project's "outputs" - the services themselves that you provide. From here on, we'll be talking about "outcomes" -in what way were people's skills, knowledge, attitudes or behavior changed? Examples: Did people report reading to their preschoolers more often because of your early childhood project? (As in the example under #1 above.) Could seniors find online information with confidence after they took your information literacy classes? What's most important is what changed in people's lives as the result of your project. And while anecdotes are great (above), numbers attached to solid indicators are far, far better.

Do not say that more people than expected attended the workshop and enjoyed it. Say that 80 adults attended two or more sessions of computer literacy training, and 75 percent of those surveyed said they were now comfortable using the library's computers to find information. Obviously, to do this, the mechanisms had to have been set up long before this report is to be written. Include any pre-project baseline data as well as post-project. If you need to find out more about outcomes measurement, see our website: mass.gov/mblc/grants/lsta/manage/obe/.

Keeping a journal and following the activities and evaluation plan in your original proposal will help a great deal. Always keep in mind as you complete your report - what difference did this project make to the population it was trying to reach? Do you think you made a difference?