Why explaining what I do matters
I’ve been having a lot of conversations recently about what I actually do since becoming a full-time freelancer. Not just with potential clients, but with friends, family and people outside the world of evaluation – the kind of conversations where job titles don’t really help and jargon definitely doesn’t.
When I worked at a university, people didn’t necessarily understand my role in detail, but “she works at the university doing something academic” was usually enough. Now that I’m freelancing, that shorthand has gone, and I’ve realised how important it is to explain clearly – and plainly – what my work actually involves.
This reflection was prompted by a piece by Andi Fugard about how we explain evaluation to people outside the field. They highlight the challenge of choosing words that make sense to the public and avoiding terminology that can feel opaque or misleading. That really resonated with me, particularly their point that even familiar terms, such as programme, don’t always land as expected with different audiences.
When job titles stop working
I’ve spent over 20 years working in evaluation in higher education. Within that world, there’s a shared language. Terms like theory of change, evaluation frameworks or counterfactual approaches tend to be understood.
Stepping into freelancing has meant stepping outside that bubble. Now I’m talking to people across charities, other non-profits and occasionally industry settings, and they don’t necessarily use the same language. Friends and family are often the most honest test. When I say what I do, I’m often met with: “So… what does that actually mean?”
So I’ve started saying I help organisations to:
- See how their programmes work – what’s actually happening on the ground (or services/initiatives, depending on the audience)
- Check if they’re doing what they intended – whether they’re achieving their goals
- Understand the difference they’re making – the real impact of their work
- Think about how to improve – practical suggestions for making things better
This shift – from labels to explanations – has reminded me that evaluation isn’t really about methods first. It’s about making sense of what’s happening and helping people learn and improve. Once that shared understanding is there, terms like ‘evaluation’ or ‘theory of change’ often start to make sense as useful shorthand rather than jargon.
Freelancing as a forcing function for clarity
The early stages of freelancing have involved a lot of networking and conversations about where my career is heading after two decades in higher education, and I’ve found myself in rooms with people doing very different kinds of work.
At one networking event for the manufacturing industry, I initially felt out of my comfort zone. But once conversations started, I realised we were often talking about similar challenges, just in different language. People working in HR or change management were asking:
- How do we know if our staff wellbeing initiatives are working?
- How can we gather honest feedback employees might not share with managers?
- How do we evidence impact to meet expectations around Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) framework or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)?
These are fundamentally evaluative questions, even if they aren’t framed that way – and often described using terms that don’t map neatly onto the language we use in evaluation.
It also made me reflect on theory of change. In some evaluation settings, it’s familiar; in others, it can feel abstract or even a bit daunting. But when I describe it simply – clarifying what you’re trying to achieve, how activities are expected to lead to change, and how you’ll know if they’ve worked – people often realise they’re already thinking in these terms. A theory of change is, at heart, just a theory about how change happens.
Re-imagining my role
The core of my work hasn’t changed. I’m still doing the same kinds of evaluation, using the same skills in theory of change, evaluation frameworks and data governance. The difference is that freelancing has pushed me to describe that work in ways that resonate beyond academia.
Rather than leading with technical terminology, I start with the problems organisations are trying to solve and then show how evaluation can help. My main focus remains on social programmes in education and the third sector, but these conversations have highlighted how transferable evaluation thinking can be.
Conclusion
Freelancing hasn’t changed the essence of my work, but it has made me think more carefully about how I talk about it. Losing the shorthand of “working at a university” has meant being clearer about the value of evaluation in everyday terms.
Ultimately, evaluation is about understanding what works, for whom and why, and using that insight to improve practice. Being asked to explain that more often – to friends, family and people in very different sectors – has been a useful reminder that how we communicate our work matters just as much as the work itself.
I’d be interested to hear how others in evaluation explain what they do outside the sector, and what they’ve learned from those conversations.
Acknowledgements: My thanks to Andi Fugard for taking the time to review an earlier draft and for their thoughtful and constructive feedback.
Author Bio: Lucy Clague is a researcher and evaluator with over 25 years’ experience, mostly in the higher education sector. She helps organisations evidence what works through evaluation, insight and impact frameworks that drive real-world change. Her expertise spans equality, diversity and inclusion, widening participation and initiatives supporting social, cultural and organisational change. She has led large-scale cross-institutional evaluations of complex programmes, designing innovative theories of change, logic models and evaluation strategies. As an independent consultant, Lucy works across academic, public and private sectors, turning data into insight and evidence into actionable results.