Consider hiring contractors to fill capacity gaps.

Hir­ing con­trac­tors to design and imple­ment data col­lec­tion, eval­u­a­tion, and/or mea­sures report­ing may be nec­es­sary. It can be dif­fi­cult to eval­u­ate the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of con­trac­tors in areas where you lack exper­tise. Take spe­cial care in select­ing the right con­trac­tor by review­ing the con­trac­tor’s pre­vi­ous work, talk­ing direct­ly with their pri­or clients, and solic­it­ing exter­nal exper­tise to vet con­trac­tors if nec­es­sary. Sec­ond, you will need to be explic­it about the infor­ma­tion needs of crit­i­cal audi­ences: what infor­ma­tion is tru­ly need­ed, when infor­ma­tion is nec­es­sary, and how it should be report­ed. The con­tract should spec­i­fy the con­tent, tim­ing and for­mat of prod­ucts deliv­ered by the con­trac­tor. Final­ly, con­sid­er the impor­tance of con­sis­ten­cy in data col­lec­tion and analy­sis. Is it pos­si­ble to use the same con­trac­tor for the length of the project? And if not, will oth­ers be able to reli­ably dupli­cate their methods?