How can organizations evaluate their projects’ impact and interpret audience responses to inform their future programming? In the videos that follow, we speak to evaluation consultants Randi Korn, founding director of Randi Korn & Associates, and Kamella Tate, former director of research and evaluation at the Music Center/Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County, about how they define impact. Korn and Tate visited the Center in May 2015 to present a workshop on evaluation methods for Center constituents.
Korn explains that in order to determine if a project was successful, organizations should first identify their target audiences and articulate outcomes in the form of an impact statement.
Tate prefers to use the terms “output goals” and “outcome goals” rather than impact. Much like Korn, Tate defines outcome goals as “change that we observed” in audiences as a result of their engagement with an organization’s programs.
Randi Korn is the founding director of Randi Korn & Associates, which she started in 1989 after working in a variety of museums including art, history, science, and natural history, and holding positions such as executive director, exhibit designer, interpretive planner, and evaluator. With a passion for learning and desire to strengthen the relationship between cultural organizations and people, Korn is dedicated to using evaluation as a learning tool to improve personal and organizational practice. Her clients have included The National Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, Association for Public Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Tech Museum of Innovation, National Museum of Natural History, among others.
Kamella Tate is the former Director of Research and Evaluation at the Music Center/Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County, where she provided in-house services and expertise in program design, monitoring, assessment, and evaluation; served as a resource to staff in areas such as academic motivation, professional development for educators, and cultural policy; and managed a variety of small-to-large-scale research projects targeting key issues in education and the arts. During her 30-year career in regional theater, Tate has worked as a producer, actor, director, and educator at companies such as South Coast Repertory, Denver Center Theatre Company, and Alaska Repertory Theatre.
