Evaluation Budgeting - My Favorite (cough cough) Part of the Job

I'm sitting here developing multiple budgets for a variety of evaluation projects that have recently been funded. Creating budgets is by far the least exciting part of my job. This is an area that I wish I was given more training in AND that AEA would actually have some guidelines for creating good evaluation budgets. But alas I can't turn back time nor can I convince AEA to actually publish detailed guidelines. So silly that money management is so hush hush.

So when you are creating a budget for an evaluation proposal be aware of the following...

1) don't forget to budget for all those calls that your client will make to you. your time is valuable. budget in correspondence time and stick to it
2) overestimate for travelling to client's sites/meetings. meetings seem to grow exponentially for projects
3) create a statement of work/contract that has flexibility statements. things will change (deadlines, deliverables) so make sure your contract has some flexibility
4) data ownership - make sure this is specified in your contract
5) data dissemination - same as above
6) proposal work - figure out a way to get paid for all those hours you have already put up front for for working on the proposal. I never realized how much time I spent on this probono work for each project...it can really add up!
7) dont forget to calculate indirect costs - make sure you know what your client will allow...or if you are at a university what they require in contracts (omg this can suck up your budget)
8) no project is just a small one..and therefore can be done for a very small budget (as if we evaluators have all this free time for free evaluation help...ugh). 10% of grants should be the minimum for evaluation contracts...higher for more research intensive projects...a little less for less intensive (no new data collection, minimal data management) projects. Evaluation is an important part of a project...make sure your client gets this!
9) specify all deliverables...and stick to them! Just because you were hired to evaluate one project doesn't mean you have to be available to answer all their evaluation questions for every project your client has (unless you are on some evlauation retainer...I could be so lucky...)
10) take on only projects that you can handle. If you have the skills/staff then submit a proposal for an evealuation. Those that take on projects that they can't handle make us all look bad (and Im so sick of coming in as the second evaluator to fix some other so called "evaluator's" damn mess...geez, just because you know something about research methods or statistics doesnt make you qualified to be an evaluator!)
11) lastly have fun! you are in this field for a reason (at least I hope you are). You enjoy evaluation work. Enjoy your projects and bask in the success of your client's projects. :)