Raise Your Voice Blog | Nicole Clark Consulting

17 Jun, 2020

Try This: Pivot Your Programs & Services

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:51:11-04:00June 17th, 2020|Categories: Program, Service, & Campaign Design|Tags: Human Centered Design, program design, Try This|0 Comments

Try this activity and let me know how it goes.

As the world began to shelter in place to flatten the curve of the coronavirus pandemic, I did what many social workers do: I checked in on my clients to make sure they were ok.

With the exception of one client, all of my client organizations turned their initial attention to orienting their staff to the world of working from home. So, naturally, most of their time was taken up with that.

My one client that was already working remotely before the shelter in place order didn’t have this issue. What they did experience, however, was a drastic shift in their programming.

To use the terminology we’ve been hearing on the news, this client (like all of my clients) had to figure out what was “essential” and what wasn’t in terms of how implementing their programs impacted staff capacity to support their program participants, many who support communities heavily impacted by COVID-19.

Putting on my social worker hat, we discussed how this organization makes decisions under normal circumstances given the work they do (abortion access and advocacy). What’s normal for them is operating with the understanding that anything (from policy introductions that can restrict abortion access, to cyberattacks and general anti-abortion rhetoric) can occur to undermine how they support their members.

So, in many ways, they’re used to being nimble. Trying to do this work during a pandemic is another experience entirely.

We talked about how this nimbleness can be applied to how they’re thinking about their programs under the pandemic. One process we’ve implemented over a year ago was the creation of an evaluation working group consisting of staff members from most of their departments who have a willingness and desire to add more intentionality in their program development, data gathering, and sense-making via evaluation. One first meeting as a group grounded the groups’ expectations as well as introduced the process of evaluative thinking.

Given that this client’s focus with me as been on evaluation capacity building, not much changed on my end in terms of still being able to engage staff, but as with all evaluations, I had to pivot the project to address this client’s emerging need: supporting their member base. The client informed me that they had to make quick decisions on which programs can still operate. If their programming could no longer operate as intended, 1) what can they learn from this, 2) how can they pivot programs deem essential to their work, 3) what qualifies a program as “non-essential”, and 4) how can they make a “non-essential” program more “essential” in the future?

I once had a supervisor that would tell staff, “Your Plan B should be as strong as your Plan A.”

I thought he was wrong. If your Plan A is strong enough, there would be no need for a Plan B.

As I move through the pandemic along with my clients, I see that my former supervisor and I were both correct. Your Plan B should be just as strong as your Plan A.

In response to my client’s needs, I created an evaluative thinking activity.

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone responsible for developing, running, and evaluating programs and services
Anyone interested in applying evaluative thinking

Here’s what you need:

Download the Evaluative Thinking Discussion Guide Download

The steps:

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10 Jun, 2020

Your Values Always Come at a Cost

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:50:15-04:00June 10th, 2020|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: activism|0 Comments

Image description: Two protestors in Washingon, DC, holding brown and white signs with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” written in black. Photographer: Yasin Ozturk

Over the last 3 months, I’ve been doing a lot of observation.

Observing the ways in which my client organizations have (or not have) been able to pivot their operations and programming while supporting their staff and community in response to the coronavirus pandemic and the shelter-in-place orders many states and countries are still under.

The coronavirus coupled with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in response to the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop, Ahmaud Aubrey, Tony McDade and George Floyd in recent weeks have exposed what we already know: Our society is unequal and many of the systems and infrastructures we engage daily are not efficient, not accessible, and not equitable.

But lately, I’ve observed something else: Companies, organizations, thought leaders, and brands who have never spoken up about racial injustices before now bombarding our inboxes and social media feeds with solidarity statements and using the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag.

If you’re like me, you’re skeptical of what you’re seeing. While there are some companies that have made their stance known on current events and social justice issues for a long time, I’ve divided public response into five categories:

The ones that do care and always speak out on social injustices
The ones that do care but have never spoken up until now
The ones that may care but are unsure what to say because it’s not “on brand”
The ones that don’t care but also don’t want to come off as racist, so they speak up
The ones that don’t care and haven’t said anything

I’m seeing a lot of “I know this is important and I want to say something but don’t want to say the wrong thing/am not educated enough on racism and police brutality/don’t want to offend anyone” remarks. These comments are stemming from people and companies who would fall in the third category.

While I don’t believe that companies should be forced to make a statement on something they have no expertise in, many of these companies, organizations, thought leaders, and brands aren’t discriminating when it comes to who they get their money from. And since racism is embedded in many systems we engage with, these entities need to speak up about it.

When someone says they don’t want to offend anyone, who are they referring to? The people directly impacted by systemic racism, or the ones that aren’t? I’ve seen several people with large social media following focusing more on the number of social media followers they’re losing for speaking up.

If taking a stand against systemic racism and police brutality causes people to unfollow you or no longer support you, were they really your ideal people anyway?

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19 Feb, 2020

Try This: Fortunately, Unfortunately

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:49:15-04:00February 19th, 2020|Categories: Program, Service, & Campaign Design|Tags: program design, Try This|0 Comments

“Fortunately, Unfortunately” is an improvisational storytelling game used in drama classes, with kids, and in group activities.

The game involves coming up with a plot and building on as the story goes.

It’s also a great way to add some program design and evaluation into your staff meetings.

With “Fortunately, Unfortunately”, we’re using this game to review processes and identify outcomes with our programming. Use this as a rapid-fire method to keep your staff on its feet by quickly identifying what went well, what didn’t go well, and how issues were addressed during the program cycle.

To add in the storytelling element, we’re retelling the program and its activities from start to finish, adding in moments of reflection where things went as planned (“fortunately”), where hiccups occurred (“unfortunately”), and how they were addressed (“fortunately”).

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone responsible for developing, running and evaluating programs and services
Students interested in evaluative thinking

Here’s what you need:

A space large enough to fit in your program staff
A space to write on that’s large enough for everyone to view
Something erasable to write with
Your program’s logic model or curriculum may be useful, too

The steps:

Have a program staff member start off, setting the foundation for the “story”. Here’s an example of how the game can go:

“Fortunately, we were able to recruit the program participants we needed. We outreached to our unusual programming participants, as well as from local schools and other programs.”

The next staff member, building on this aspect of the program design, can say:

“Unfortunately, we recruited more participants than we could accommodate.”

The rest of the game can play out like this:

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14 Feb, 2020

Self Care Corner: Your Friendships Are Just As Important As Your Relationships

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:48:04-04:00February 14th, 2020|Categories: Self & Community Care|Tags: self care, Self Care Corner|0 Comments

On the eve of my 30th birthday, I met a few friends at a hookah lounge on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York.

At one point during the evening, one friend asked everyone to go around and share how they came into my life and one thing they’ve always appreciated about me.

I had friends there from my grad school program, feminist and other activist/social justice spaces, classmates from Spelman College, and friends I made from my pole dance classes.

As everyone took their turn sharing how they’d met me and what they appreciated about me, I realized how much I’d compartmentalized friendships. It had been rare for me to have my friends mixed in this way.

I also realized how uncomfortable I felt. Not only because I’ve always felt awkward hearing people speak positively about me, but also because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d mentioned to any of them how much they meant to me.

Intuitively, we know that our friends care about us. We also know which friends are always up to have fun and which ones we can count on in times of need. But how often do we tell our friends how much they mean to us?

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7 Feb, 2020

Ask Nicole: How Do I Decide Whether or Not to Give Up?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:46:47-04:00February 7th, 2020|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole, consulting|0 Comments

Have a question you’d like to be featured? Let me know.

Have you ever deconstructed the lyrics to a song?

I did that recently with Beyoncé’s Ring the Alarm from her 2006 album B’Day. In particular, the chorus/hook of the song.

If you’re not familiar, Ring the Alarm is about a woman contemplating whether to persist with a relationship that isn’t serving her versus walking away into the unknown (or in this case, with the understanding that she may be giving up on things that she’s grown accustomed to. Like Chinchilla coats, a Benz and the house off the coast, among other things.

Let’s look at it from a logic standpoint versus an emotional standpoint.

Logically, it doesn’t make sense to stay with someone that’s not treating you with respect. But emotionally, we’ve all lived through experiences where giving something up (in this case, a relationship) feels far scarier than ending it and going it alone. Plus, who wants to start all over?

I was asked recently if I’d ever gotten to a point where I wanted to call it quits from my consulting business. Yes I’ve gotten to this point plenty of times! I was also asked how did I know to stick with it.

Logically, I knew that I could always get another job. I had been with my agency for almost 6 years and it took around 3 months to land that position after graduating from my MSW program. Now that I’m a licensed social worker, I assumed it would take roughly the same amount of time or even less.

Emotionally, I’ve put a lot of time and effort into building my business and despite knowing what I logically know, it would be hard to let it go.

I realized it’s less about the time and effort you give to something. It’s about identifying your perceived return on investment (ROI). Here’s another way to illustrate this:

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Try This: Pivot Your Programs & Services

Your Values Always Come at a Cost

Try This: Fortunately, Unfortunately

Self Care Corner: Your Friendships Are Just As Important As Your Relationships

Ask Nicole: How Do I Decide Whether or Not to Give Up?

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