Characterize the target audience for your results, thinking about who you want to reach and why. This can include decision-makers, project stakeholders, academia, media, and the public. Identifying target audience representatives who are involved in developing outreach materials and messaging can be helpful with how results are disseminated and whether effective messaging is developed.

Ecosystem service valuation results and associated metrics can be complex. One concern with developing outreach products is making economic and ecological science clear to audiences who do not have expertise in these areas. In developing products and tools, keep several factors in mind: actions that you would like the audience to take; the need to maintain credibility; and communicating the quality of the research. Remember that working with partners, stakeholders, and local champions to craft messages comes with numerous benefits.

Involving an outreach specialist (liaison to the research community) to open communication lines between stakeholders and researchers throughout the project is valuable for gathering initial input from the public about ecosystem services. This can be facilitated by using social science methods, convening stakeholders to discuss whether they have sufficient information and if not, determining the actions required to fill knowledge gaps. This may include facilitating communication between different research disciplines and the larger stakeholder group and developing communication, marketing, and outreach products throughout and beyond the project period.

Clearly state the purpose, expected outcomes, and intended benefits of the evaluation so that the correct data will be collected. Reflect on questions such as: What do I want to know from the evaluation? What do I intend to do with the information? What target audiences will I share the evaluation results with? When will the data be collected? Will a sample be used? Who will collect the data? What is the schedule for data collection and will this work with respondents’ schedules?

Understanding how the evaluation will be conducted and the outcomes of the valuation is not only about documenting the results but also being able to draw conclusions from those results.