The latter is much harder, but you must do it. It's very important to make sure you look at both process and outcomes. Remember the example of United Way, who previously used to summarize their performance in terms of what they had done. That's process, which is not trivial - it's what they got for their money. But it's not what the consumers got.
Process is staff talk.
It's what was delivered to the population in the way of services etc, but it doesn't measure outcomes for the population. Now United Way uses only outcomes. Again, note the cost of missing the generalizability checkpoint - wasting money reinventing the wheel. They are hiring friends and ex-employees to do the evaluation, suppressing the evaluation report, and making deals with board members to fund their pet projects as long as they keep quiet about how the money is being used. Another major issue is evaluation in universities.