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Hey, my responses are getting shorter!

1.  Joe, front-end evaluation is all about finding out what the visitor
wants, as well as what the visitor believes and knows.   Formative
evaluation can also find out what the visitor wants and needs, even if the
visitor doesn't know until he/she sees what we are proposing (e.g., people
didn't know they wanted a planetarium until they saw one for the first
time).  So yes, the visitor counts at least as much if not far more than
the exhibit developer or curator does, when we find out using evaluation.

2.  Adela, Beryl, Erich, Jeff, Paul, and everyone who is concerned that
some funders' preferences for proposals with evaluation put small
institutions at a great disadvantage, I note that some smaller
institutions win a large number of highly competitive grants and awards,
from NSF, IMLS, private foundations, and others who require evaluation.
I'm thinking Sciencenter in Ithaca NY, Montshire Museum of Science in
Norwich Vermont, Explora in Albuquerque NM, Chabot Science Center in
Oakland CA, Manhattan Children's Museum in New York City.  I serve on a
foundation board that regularly makes grants to organizations with just
two or three paid staff, and we require (and pay for) evaluation every
time.  I'm sure this listserv could come up with many more examples here
and abroad.  

Perhaps a good ASTC session could be on how at least some smaller
institutions manage to do evaluation and compete successfully with much
larger places.

Beryl, I've sat on NSF panels where people said "this proposal is such a
small part of that giant institution's work that they will not give it any
attention," and penalized the giant proposal because of that.  So both
small and big institutions can experience bias.  I've also seen positive
votes on small institution proposals just because they were small
institutions, and the project would be so important to them that they
couldn't let it fail.  Hmmm, too small to fail.  I like that better than
the banks' claim that they are too big to fail.

Alan  
________________________________________
Alan J. Friedman, Ph.D.
Consultant for Museum Development and Science Communication
29 West 10th Street
New York, New York 10011 USA
T  +1 917 882-6671
E   [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
W www.FriedmanConsults.com <http://www.friedmanconsults.com/>
 
a member of The Museum Group
www.museumgroup.com <http://www.museumgroup.com/>


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