9 Strategies For Effectively Managing Feedback On Evaluation Reports
December 2025
About the author: Bonnie Lakusta is a Project Lead at Three Hive Consulting and a Credentialed Evaluator with a doctorate in psychiatry. Bonnie’s background is grounded in research, project management, and change management within healthcare. She brings expertise in facilitation, quality improvement, and evaluation design, with a focus on creating usable data and clear, memorable key messages tailored to diverse audiences.
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Receiving feedback on evaluation reporting is a critical component in creating high-quality evaluation reports that meet interest holder needs. Feedback isn’t just about how well a report was written; it can help improve accuracy and understanding as well. However, managing feedback from multiple people, each with differing perspectives, priorities, and timelines, can be complicated! Approaching the feedback process with a plan can help avoid chaotic version control problems and keep your timelines on track. Here are nine tested strategies to streamline your approach:
Prior to distributing the draft of a report you want feedback on, you can set yourself up for success.
1. Understand the approval process.
Make sure you know what this looks like, and the time it will take to get all necessary approvals. Though you may be asking a small group to review your report, they may have to get internal approval from higher up the chain within their respective organizations. The more you know about this, the more you can set realistic timelines and boundaries. Ask up front: Who needs to sign off on this report and how long will that take? Understanding the approval chain helps you plan your review schedule and avoid last-minute delays.
2. Know your client’s expectations.
Before you begin writing, you should already have a copy of your client’s style guide, accessibility guide, and be familiar with key language or terminology. I also like to talk about expectations in terms of comprehensiveness in a report: is this a lengthy technical report with every detail, or perhaps only a quick summary, where anything over ten pages would be too much? Knowing up front what the expectations are will avoid catching anyone by surprise.
Another expectation to be familiar with is deadlines. Though you’ve likely laid out a report deadline in your evaluation plan, is there any flexibility? Is there a specific reason for that deadline, or was it arbitrary? This can help you figure out your options if things go awry.
3. Communicate the number of review cycles you have in mind.
This number should be based on the time and budget you have available. At Three Hive, we often say two rounds of edits is our goal. A first round may be for content and accuracy, while a second round may be for finesse, those nitpicky details, and copy editing.
When you send out that first draft, there are a number of points to include in the email:
4. Describe the specific type of feedback you are looking for.
Do you want copy editing, wordsmithing, or formatting edits in addition to reviewing for content and accuracy? In addition, you could consider offering some guidelines where you ask reviewers to be precise and actionable in their comments, rather than leaving question marks or vague comments like “Not true”.
5. Set a review deadline.
I find that providing a deadline helps to keep you out of that grey area where you’re not sure if you need to wait for more reviews or if you’re ready to make edits. Give a deadline and be clear about what happens after that deadline passes.
6. Specify preferred feedback methods.
Do you want reviewers to make edits in the report with or without tracked changes? Or perhaps you don’t want edits in the report at all but prefer using comments to describe a suggested edit. I tend to use Word for reporting, which has both of these features. If you’re using Canva or PowerPoint (or other tools without track change options), commenting may be your only option. Confirm that all reviewers have access to platforms that support these functionalities.
7. Assign defined roles and responsibilities to reviewers.
If there are specific sections you want reviewed in detail or want explicit feedback for, tag them or highlight them and request specific review. I have also written reports where entire sections are relevant to only a portion of reviewers, so to save time, I offer that reviewers only need to read certain sections, but always have the option of reviewing the entire report if desired.
Depending on the method of feedback (see #8 below!), you may also want to assign a point person. For larger groups, you can request that teams consolidate their feedback internally prior to sharing back with you, and your point person is responsible for coordinating that.
8. Be clear about next steps.
Let the team know what happens after each round of reviews, for example, that you will review and consider all feedback, but can’t guarantee that all suggested edits will be included. After all, you need to maintain reporting of results transparently and honestly. Keeping a reporting log may help you do this; document the suggested edit and the edit you did (or didn’t) make, and why. This log can be shared with your client as a summary of changes.
And finally, find a process that makes receiving feedback not only effective, but also efficient:
9. Use live document sharing to maintain version control.
This is one of my all-time most-used features of Microsoft Teams. When I am sharing a report with reviewers, I’ll share a live link rather than attaching it to an email. (In fact, I do this with 99% of documents I want reviewed, including evaluation plans and data collection tools). The primary benefit is that there is no versioning to manage; everyone is working from a live copy. Another benefit is that it promotes transparency: each reviewer can see other reviewers’ comments and edits. Of course, I have to be clear about this upfront so that reviewers know who will be able to see their contributions. I’ll often offer that reviewers can email me separately on a saved copy if they have feedback they prefer to keep confidential.
Working from the same document also allows discussions to happen between reviewers where there is disagreement, and they can come to a consensus on their own.
Microsoft products, Google Docs, and Canva all allow collaborative document sharing.
For this to be the most effective, consider if there is any formatting you need to lock down; sometimes images, charts or the Table of Contents can get moved around and create confusion.
WARNING: When I share a Word document from Teams, many clients can only open it in the web-browser version of Word. This can affect formatting and page numbers, which can lead to confusion when referring to specific parts of a document.WARNING: You will want to familiarize yourself with how to revoke access after a contract has been closed, particularly if you shared an entire folder rather than a specific file.Final Considerations
After you get feedback and make edits to your report, consider hosting a meeting to discuss the edits, and ask any necessary clarifying questions. Be transparent about what you integrated and what you left out, and why.
By setting clear expectations, using effective collaboration tools, and maintaining open, structured communication, the review process can become a constructive and efficient collaboration.
If you have any practices that have worked for you, please share them in the comment section below!