What does our institution need to do before the evaluation can start?
Before the evaluation can start, your institution needs to sign the agreement, set the evaluator up as a vendor and arrange payment (often through a purchase order), name the project team, review IRB requirements, and put any data use agreements in place. Here's how they usually divide up in Grantibly's onboarding, and you'll see most of them sit with your institution.
| Step | What it involves | Who usually leads it |
|---|
| The agreement | The evaluator sends it; you find who is authorized to sign and whether legal or contracts review is needed | Your institution, for the signatures |
| Vendor setup | Registering the evaluator with procurement or accounts payable | Your procurement office, with forms from the evaluator |
| Payment | A purchase order against the award budget, direct deposit, and invoicing instructions | Your finance or accounts payable office |
| The project team | The PI, any co-PIs, the project coordinator, and finance, procurement, and IRB contacts | The project lead |
| IRB requirements | Your institution's IRB process, and whether the evaluator should be listed on the application | Your team and the evaluator together |
| Data agreements | A data use, data sharing, or confidentiality agreement if the evaluator will receive participant or institutional data | Your legal office and the evaluator |
Every institution's procedures are different, so ask each office what it needs. You can also gather what the evaluator will ask for first: the award narrative, the logic model, if you have one, the funder's reporting calendar, and the project timeline. Whether your project needs IRB approval at all is its own question, and Does my program evaluation need IRB approval? covers it.
What happens at the kickoff meeting?
At the kickoff meeting, the team agrees on goals and timeline, roles, how you'll communicate, the evaluation activities and data collection, and the IRB plan, and identifies any startup steps that are still open. It's scheduled once the institutional steps are underway, and most evaluation work begins after it.
Invite the people who will carry the project day to day: the PI and co-PIs, the project coordinator, and anyone who will help gather information or handle the IRB submission. The kickoff is about this grant's calendar and who does what. How an evaluation unfolds from kickoff to final report, phase by phase, is a broader question, and What does the evaluation process look like from kickoff to final report? walks through it.
How often will we meet with the evaluator?
You'll meet with your evaluator on a regular schedule outlined in your scope of work. Grantibly typically meets with project teams quarterly for about an hour, with email in between and reports timed to the funder's calendar, but we can meet more or less frequently depending on the project.
The quarterly meetings review progress against the evaluation's milestones, talk through challenges, and plan what comes next. Between them, we use email for routine updates and anything that needs a written record, schedule video calls when a question needs a longer conversation, and keep drafts and shared files in a secure shared folder. We reply to routine questions within 24 to 48 business hours. Formal reports follow your funder's schedule, with shorter summaries between them, and What does my funder's annual report actually need from the evaluation? covers what those reports feed.
The Grantibly perspective
Lauren's perspective
We don't want to be an evaluator who appears once a year, asks for data, writes a report, and disappears. We see ourselves as a partner, not a vendor.
Transparent partnership means no surprises. We keep in regular contact so you always know where the project stands, and we want you to call us when you're considering a change, struggling with participation, trying to understand an unexpected result, or preparing for a conversation with your funder.
