Value for Investment training
Making difficult decisions about how to allocate limited resources is a persistent challenge for governments, funders, and organisations everywhere. Even in well-resourced systems, choices about where and how to invest can be complex – and when fiscal pressures increase, the demand for credible value-for-money assessment only intensifies.
The Value for Investment (VfI) approach addresses this challenge by integrating insights from evaluation and economics to support clear, balanced judgements about resource use. These workshops are designed for evaluators, commissioners, policy staff, managers, and other decision-makers who want practical ways to assess and communicate value in real-world settings.
Workshops are available online or face-to-face and can be tailored to your organisation’s needs. They can be scheduled on request or accessed periodically through evaluation associations.
Value for Investment: practical training workshop
This interactive workshop can be delivered as a full-day or split across two half-days. It combines short presentations, group discussion, practical exercises, and examples.
Topics can include:
- What value for money means and why it matters
- Evaluative questions about good resource use
- Introduction to the Value for Investment approach
- Developing and using criteria, standards, and rubrics in evaluation
- Co-developing context-specific VfI rubrics with stakeholders
- Identifying evidence needs and selecting an appropriate mix of methods
- Incorporating economic methods of evaluation within a broader evaluation framework
- Making sense of mixed methods evidence with stakeholders and rubrics
- Reporting findings clearly, with explicit reasoning and well-supported judgements.
Participants can receive optional pre-workshop reading and a post-workshop take-home pack with links to online resources.
Navigating economic methods of evaluation: a practical orientation for evaluators and evaluation users
This workshop provides a practical orientation to key economic methods of evaluation for people who need to understand, commission, interpret, use, or integrate them in evaluation and decision-making. It is designed for evaluators and evaluation users who want enough confidence to ask good questions, make informed choices, and connect economic evidence with broader evaluative reasoning.
Topics may include:
- What economic methods of evaluation are, and what they are designed to do
- The main families of methods, including cost-benefit analysis, social return on investment, cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-utility analysis, and related approaches
- Similarities, differences, strengths, limitations, and common sources of misunderstanding
- Core concepts such as opportunity cost, perspective, time horizon, discounting, causal inference, monetary valuation, and summary indicators – and how to interpret them
- Using economic evaluation as a tool for exploring the implications of uncertainty through sensitivity, scenario, and break-even analysis
- How to critically review an economic evaluation to determine whether it is transparent and fit for purpose
- When economic methods are useful, and when they are not enough on their own
- How economic methods can be combined with broader evaluative frameworks and mixed methods evidence to reach more holistic evaluative judgements
- How to scope, commission, interpret, and use economic analysis well
- Practical implications for evaluation design, reporting, and decision-making
- Resources and further reading.
This is an orientation workshop rather than a technical training course in designing and conducting economic evaluations. It is intended to help participants navigate the landscape, use economic evidence wisely, and connect it to the wider questions that matter in evaluation.
How to access these workshops
There are several ways to access VfI training:
- Through evaluation associations and conferences, which periodically host workshops that individuals can register for
- As private workshops for organisations or networks, typically for groups of around 15-30 people
- In smaller group formats by arrangement, including options tailored for NGOs and other mission-driven organisations.
If you are interested in hosting a workshop or exploring options for a smaller group, please get in touch to discuss what would work best for you.
Tailored workshops
Training is often customised for particular sectors, teams, and contexts, with examples and exercises adapted to participants’ needs. Sessions can range from introductory overviews to deeper dives into selected topics.
Possible extension topics include:
- Rubric challenges, tips and tricks
- Hidden benefits of using rubrics, including stakeholder engagement and uptake of findings
- Value propositions and their role in developing VfI criteria
- Integrated approaches across monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL), economic evaluation, and VfI
- Embedding the VfI system across portfolios, organisations or systems
- Deriving recommendations and identifying opportunities to create more value
- Evaluative reasoning and its relationship to research, participation, and values
- Common questions and pushback, including subjectivity, stakeholder involvement, and the role of economic evaluation
- Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in VfI evaluation: principles for efficient, effective, and ethical use.
Shorter or more focused formats are also available when useful. For example, 60-minute briefings, 3-hour essentials trainings, and other formats can be tailored to your needs.
