ANZEA Conference 2022

Sport NZ are on a journey to develop an approach to value for money (VFM) assessment that gets to the heart of our value proposition and defines what it really means to use resources well to create value for play, active recreation and sport in Aotearoa for tangata whenua and all New Zealanders. We believe a strong bi-cultural foundation is critical to our national identity and wellbeing.

Traditionally there have been a few competing views about value for money. There are the economists, who favour cost-benefit analysis. The impact measurement set, who like SROI. The international development sector with their 'Five Es' and key performance indicators. And then there's us, evaluators who want to provide good answers to VFM questions, bring a diverse and rich bag of valuing approaches and methods. Some of us may have flirted with CBA, SROI and the like, and can see their strengths but couldn't shake the feeling they're not quite giving us a complete picture of VFM. In Aotearoa, we also have a unique opportunity to understand VFM through the lens of Te Tiriti as well.

It's time for evaluators to own this space. Our profession has the frameworks and tools to bring together the best each method has to offer and to add our own insights to answer value for money questions.

Over the past year or so, we've been working with Julian King to develop a VFM framework that brings together rubrics, mixed methods, theory-based evaluation, participatory evaluation, economic evaluation and NZ's Living Standards Framework into a logical, intuitive, coherent evaluation framework. In this presentation, we'll show you how we've approached it.

We'll give you a peek at what we've done so far, what we're planning to do next, and what we've learned that you can apply in your work.