How to Build a Successful
Evaluation Consulting Practice

Description: This class offers the opportunity for participants to learn from one who has been a successful evaluation consultant for 30 years.  They will get an inside look at building a successful evaluation consulting business.  What does it take to establish an independent consulting practice?  How do you find your consulting niche?  How do you get started, attract clients, determine how much to charge, create collaborations, and build a successful practice?  Included will be discussion on such topics as marketing, pricing, bidding on contracts, managing projects, resolving conflicts, professional ethics, and client satisfaction.   Participants will be invited to share their own experiences and seek advice on situations they've encountered.  

Instructor: Dr. Michael Quinn Patton directs an organizational development and evaluation consulting business, "Utilization-Focused Evaluation." He has been an evaluation consultant for 30 years and has worked at local, state, national, and international levels. He has evaluated a wide variety of programs in areas as diverse as health, human services, education, cooperative extension, environment, agriculture, employment, training, leadership development, literacy, early childhood and parent education, poverty alleviation, economic development, and advocacy. He has consulted with non-profit, philanthropic, private sector, and international organizations. His consulting practice has included program evaluation, strategic planning, conflict resolution, board facilitation, staff development, futuring, and a variety of organizational development approaches.

He is author of five books on program evaluation including Utilization-Focused Evaluation: The New Century Text (Sage, 1997) and Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods (3rd edition, Sage, 2002). He is a former President of the American Evaluation Association (AEA); received the Alva and Gunner Myrdal Award from the Evaluation Research Society for "outstanding contributions to evaluation use and practice" and the Paul Lazarsfeld Award for lifetime contributions to evaluation theory from AEA. He has held many positions including Director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Social Research and received that University's Morse-Amoco Award for outstanding teaching. His latest book, with two Canadian colleagues, is Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed (Random House Canada, 2006).

Certificate: CEP IC.h

Fee: $425