Start Your Evaluation Year Strong: 5 Things Every Evaluator Should Set Up in January
January 2026
About the author: Stephanie Spencer is an Evaluation Associate with Three Hive Consulting and Eval Academy Coordinator. As a Credentialed Evaluator, she brings experience in mixed-methods evaluation across health, social service, and community sectors, with a focus on qualitative methods, reflective practice, and trauma-informed approaches.
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January marks a natural reset point for evaluation; a moment to pause, reflect, and intentionally design the year ahead. No matter what sector of evaluation you work in, a strong start lays the groundwork for smoother workflows, clearer communication, and more meaningful evaluation results. And while it’s never possible (or realistic) to plan for everything, establishing early clarity and structure can make a real difference.
Here are five practical steps every evaluator should consider as you kick off your new year.
1. Revisit your evaluation plans and update your annual roadmap
Even when projects span multiple years, January is an ideal time to step back and realign your evaluation plans with current realities. Plans are living documents; they shape your purpose, questions, methods, timelines, roles, and communication pathways. And because evaluation is adaptive, plans often shift as programs evolve.
What to do:
Revisit your evaluation plan(s) and check whether the purpose, scope, questions, indicators, and methods are still accurate and relevant. Look for shifts in:
Program delivery or design
Organizational priorities
Context or capacity
Available data
Knowledge mobilization and reporting needs (e.g., upcoming funder reporting timelines, requests for alternative or additional knowledge products such as briefs, dashboards or presentations)
This check-in helps ensure your evaluation remains aligned not only with how the program is operating, but also with how findings will be shared and used.
Ask yourself:
Are we still asking the right questions?
Does the plan reflect how the program actually operates today?
Have interest holder needs, risks, or assumptions changed?
Are the indicators still measurable with the data we have or are collecting?
Check out our evaluation plan template here: https://www.evalacademy.com/resources/p/evaluation-plan-template
Re-map your annual deliverables in one place using tools like a dashboard, Gantt chart, or annual work plan, to get a clear view of the year ahead. Take a look at our article “How To Present Your Evaluation Timelines: 4 Simple Ideas”.
Clarify decision points with interest holders, especially those tied to timing. As you map out your year, identify the key moments when you’ll need approvals, inputs, or access to move forward smoothly. January is the ideal time to surface these because they shape your annual roadmap: who needs to be engaged when, where bottlenecks could occur, and what sequencing is realistic. Discussing them early helps set expectations, prevents delays, and ensures your evaluation timeline aligns with organizational cycles and availability.
Why it matters:
A refreshed evaluation plan helps you stay intentional and aligned with what interest holders actually need to learn — not just what was drafted months ago.
2. Align your interest holders early, before timelines get busy
Strong evaluations rely on strong relationships. January is a natural time to reconnect with interest holders and ensure everyone is aligned before major deliverables ramp up.
What to do:
Schedule start-of-year check-ins with clients and partners to confirm priorities, timelines, and expectations.
Reconnect with steering committees or advisory groups.
A quick “refresh” meeting helps clarify roles, meeting cadence, decision points, and contributions for the year ahead.
Review or update your communications plan.
Document when and how you’ll provide updates (monthly emails, quarterly check-ins, milestone meetings). Clear expectations reduce surprises.
Clarify mutual expectations.
Talk through responsibilities, ethics processes, recruitment windows, data access needs, and any decision points that may impact timelines.
Create space for interest holders to share what’s changed.
Even short conversations can surface new priorities, risks, staffing changes, or partnerships that will impact your approach. This will help you to make any modifications to your evaluation plan in step 1.
Why it matters:
Early alignment lays the foundation for smoother collaboration, stronger engagement, and meaningful use of evaluation results.
3. Refresh your evaluation tools, templates, and procedures
A new year is an ideal moment to revisit the tools, templates, and processes you rely on across the evaluation cycle. These shape how you collect data, engage participants, manage workflows, and communicate findings. A few minor updates now can save many hours later.
What to do:
Review your data collection tool templates.
Look over your template interview guides, focus group guides, consent forms, recruitment scripts, and survey introductions — the versions you use when setting up new projects. Assess whether they reflect current best practices, including clear and accessible language, trauma-informed approaches, cultural relevance, and alignment with your organization’s or team’s standards. These updates strengthen the resources you’ll use in future evaluations, without affecting any tools currently in use.
Take a look at some of our most popular templates:
Review your evaluation tools and processes more broadly.
January is also a good time to step back and ask whether the tools and systems you’re using still serve you well. For example:
Are you still using the same software or platforms, and do they still meet your needs?
Have your processes evolved (or become more complex) over time?
Are you using AI tools more frequently, and if so, do you need clearer guidance, boundaries, or documentation around their use?
Have you adopted new tools that should be formalized in your procedures?
Is there anything you used to rely on that you can now let go of?
Refresh project management resources.
Review tracking logs, recruitment trackers, meeting agendas, workflow procedures, and roles/responsibilities charts. Adjust based on what did (or didn’t) work last year.
Read more about Project Management for Evaluation here: https://www.evalacademy.com/articles/project-management-for-evaluation
Refine your reporting templates.
Revisit your standard reporting structures to ensure they support clear, accessible communication. Look at the flow, formatting, and visual hierarchy to see whether they help readers easily understand key messages. You may also want to update guidance within the template — for example, prompts for interpretation, notes on plain-language writing, placeholders for an executive summary, or cues for incorporating interest holder perspectives. Strong templates make reporting more efficient and help ensure consistency and quality across all your evaluation products.
Take a look at our Complete Reporting Bundle: https://www.evalacademy.com/resources/p/complete-reporting-bundle
Incorporate learnings from last year. Ask yourself questions like:
Did a report feel too long or too rigid?
Did clients get lost in technical language?
Did your reporting template bury the story?
Were certain steps unclear for the team?
Use these reflections to update your tools, templates, and procedures before projects get busy.
Why it matters:
Good tools save time, reduce rework, and set the tone for rigour and clarity across your evaluation practice. Refreshing them at the start of the year helps ensure your evaluation practice remains responsive, efficient, and grounded in good practice.
4. Clean and structure your evaluation data ecosystem
January is housekeeping month, and not just for your inbox. Your data ecosystem includes all the systems, files, and processes you use to collect, store, organize, and analyze data. When this ecosystem is tidy, consistent, and well-maintained, your entire evaluation practice benefits.
What to do:
Create or refine standard folder structures.
Apply consistent structures across all projects (e.g., raw data, cleaned data, transcripts, tools, reporting). Consistency makes files easier to find and reduces confusion, especially for new team members.
Back up key data and documents.
Check that transcripts, consent forms, datasets, meeting notes, and master tools are stored securely with appropriate access permissions. Ensure backups follow your organization’s data privacy, confidentiality, and storage protocols so sensitive information is protected and handled consistently across projects.
Review data storage and retention practices.
Confirm you’re not holding onto data longer than necessary. Check retention policies, archive completed project files appropriately, and securely delete materials that are no longer required.
Improve file clarity and traceability.
Use clear naming conventions with dates, versions, and descriptors (e.g., cleaned-dataset_v2_20250101.xlsx). This reduces confusion and supports easier onboarding later.
If your organization uses Microsoft Teams or SharePoint, take advantage of version history, which allows you to maintain a single “living” file rather than saving multiple versions.
Do a quick digital clean-up.
Clear out download folders, temporary files, cached documents, and large files you no longer need. These small clean-ups reduce clutter and make it easier to locate current and relevant files.
Why it matters:
Strong data organization reduces cognitive load, prevents errors, and keeps projects moving. When your systems are clear and intentional from the start, you can focus on what matters most: making sense of data and generating insights that support learning and action.
5. Plan your professional development and evaluation practice needs for the year
Evaluators invest heavily in others’ learning, but our own development deserves equal attention. January is a great time to reflect on the skills, systems, and supports you want to strengthen this year.
What to do:
Map out your professional development goals.
Identify the skills you want to build and the learning opportunities available, such as:
Conferences or workshops
Communities of practice
Courses or certifications
Skill-building in methods, facilitation, or data visualization
Professional Development budgets or approval timelines
Take a look at our available courses here: https://www.evalacademy.com/courses
Strengthen the foundations of your evaluation practice.
Consider what you need to do your best work, whether you work independently or within an organization:
Review your workload and capacity
Refresh your CV, portfolio, or work samples
Update your website or LinkedIn
Clarify the types of evaluation work you want to focus on
Strengthen relationships with collaborators or mentors
Update proposal templates, project plans, or costing tools
These steps ensure your evaluation practice grows intentionally, not reactively.
Why it matters:
When you invest in your own learning and refine your practice, you set yourself up for stronger evaluations, more effective relationships, and contributions that truly support learning and improvement.
Final Thoughts
The new year doesn’t need to be about reinventing your practice; it’s about tuning it. By taking time to revisit your evaluation plans, organize your systems, refine your tools, align your interest holders, and invest in your development, you create the conditions for smoother collaboration and stronger evaluation outcomes all year long.