Hi Lowie, and welcome to Permaculture Impact.
I hope our courses and forums can help you in your quest! It’s great that you’ve come here now, because we do recommend planning your evaluation and data collection as early as possible in your project lifecycle, so that you know what you need to measure, and can collect decent baseline data.

Are you aware of the International Permaculture CoLab? You might like to check out their website and consider joining as a member (it’s free), as it’s great network with lots of knowledge and resources in some of the areas you mention in your post above.