Raise Your Voice Blog | Nicole Clark Consulting

16 May, 2019

Try This: Take a Bird’s Eye View

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:36:01-04:00May 16th, 2019|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: Capacity Building, Strategic Planning, Try This|0 Comments

There are various factors that impact your program.

If you’re a nonprofit or social service agency, chances are you run several programs and services.

These programs and services don’t exist in a vacuum. In fact, a variety of factors make up a complex system in which your program or service operates within, including budgets and available funding, policies (organizational as well as federal/state/local), organizational structure, staff leadership capacity, participant perceptions, internal and external stakeholders, and more.

We often lose sight of these and we can be in the thick of it, doing what we can to keep the program afloat. However, when we take a bird’s eye view, we see the context that programs and services operate under.

This activity is ideal for:

Staff responsible for developing and overseeing the implementation of programs, services, and strategies

Here’s what you need:

Sheets of paper or an erasable whiteboard
Writing utensils (pens, pencils, markers, or dry erase markers)

The steps:

Take your preferred writing utensil and either a sheet of paper or erasable whiteboard. Draw a large circle, and a smaller circle in the middle. Write the name of your program or service in the middle, like this:

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10 May, 2019

Tomorrow’s Another Day

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:33:33-04:00May 10th, 2019|Categories: Public Health & Social Work|Tags: Reflections, Social Work|0 Comments

During the summer of 2010, I was in the throes of my first job after graduating from my graduate program.

I was running out of money and couldn’t afford my apartment any longer due to my roommate moving out. I ended up moving out and placing my belongings in storage.

When you’re unemployed, running out of money, trying to find a job in a profession that you’ve only studied and didn’t have real experience in, and living in a stressful place like New York City, you’re tired, to say the least.

The best part about that time is having friends who opened their homes to me and invited me over to eat. On this summer day, the friend I was staying with invited me to join her and some of our grad school classmates for a day at the beach.

A beach in New York? Yes. Though I can’t remember which beach we tried to go to. “Tried” is the operative word, as we tried getting there by car and ended up getting stuck in traffic for hours before turning back around.

As my friend and I were getting ready to leave, I remember how excited I was. I needed a break from applying to positions where I never got a response back and getting “thanks, but no thanks” emails from recruiters.

I want to feel normal, even if it is for a day, I thought.

When you don’t have a permanent home to feel safe in, to cook for yourself in, to have your belongings surrounding you, or to have your mail delivered to, it’s pretty difficult to care about anything else. I could have easily asked my family to book a flight for me so that I could go home to Atlanta, but I was too stubborn for that. I have a Masters degree now, I thought, and I need to find a way to make this work.

Flash forward to December of that year. After a summer of struggle, I managed to land a job as a clinical case manager and had been on the job since August. I also moved into my first apartment without roommates at the start of December. Toward the middle of the month, my agency held its annual holiday party for clients.

During the party, I was standing with a few of my coworkers as we watched our clients eat and enjoy themselves and their families. I spotted several of my clients, many of whom tend to be in crisis mode when I would have regular appointments with them.

But on this day, they were fine. In fact, I met with one of my clients the next day. When I asked her if she enjoyed the holiday party, she said:

“I loved it! I love coming to the holiday party every year because when I’m there, I feel normal. Even if it’s just for a day.”

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1 May, 2019

Ask Nicole: How Can I Convince Clients to Focus on the Process AND the Outcome?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:32:56-04:00May 1st, 2019|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole, clients, consulting|0 Comments

Have a question you’d like answered? Let me know.

Tammy, a licensed independent clinical social worker and consultant based in the Pacific Northwest, recently sent me a really thoughtful email. Tammy writes:

Hi Nicole,

First, I just want to thank you for writing your blog, and let you know upfront that this is one of those, “Thank you! I needed to read your website.” kinda emails.

In consulting work, I feel like I’m going to struggle with communicating how design-based thinking and evidence-based decision making (and not necessarily Evidence-Based Programs (EBP)) could be really powerful tools for organizations. Where I live, the agencies that design their own programs are often bootstrapped for cash; and the ones with money will just purchase a curriculum and send their staff to a national training on how to implement that curriculum. To get funding for a lot of things out here, you need to use an EBP. I’m a big fan of evidence-based decision-making processes, but I think most pre-packaged evidence-based programs (at least that I’ve worked with) are like disempowering wet bandaids that never really stick! It seems like most organizations are more willing to pay someone else to train their staff to implement a very structured program that’s already been created than they are to work with someone to design a program that really suits their needs, strengths, and resources (even when they acknowledge they probably would do a better job than the pre-made curriculum!)

So, the question is: how do you help people realize the potential for design-based thinking and evidence-based decision making processes in a non-profit/agency world that has become relatively disempowered in the realm of program design? Have you run into that at all with your consulting work focused on program design? If so, how do you navigate that conversation?

A few months ago, a prospective client organization came to me about a project opportunity. I had some initial conversations with the client, but I got the sense that what they wanted and what my process is weren’t in alignment.

It was confirmed when the client asked me to further explain one key aspect of my process. The aspect–something that the client initially agreed with and wanted to be included in my proposal–focuses on participatory processes between myself, the staff, and key stakeholders. The client seemed less interested in this aspect and wanted me to tailor my approach to just outcomes.

Over the past year, I’ve developed more of an interest in working with clients to develop, evaluate, and refine their process versus solely focuses on outcomes. So, I knew deep down this wasn’t the project (or the client) for me.

The bulk of my consulting as of late has centered around evaluation, with design thinking included depending on the work scope. I’ve found that clients who’ve hired me to evaluate a specific program have been more rigid in what takes place in our time working together compared to clients that hired me specifically for capacity building purposes that span all of their programs and services.

This comes down to whether the client is focused more on the process or the outcome. Based on my observation, when client organizations are focused solely on outcomes, they’re confined to certain parameters that may be heavily influenced by a funder, things being “evidence-based”, or a deadline. As a result, I have more flexibility with clients that have hired me for building organizational capacity and learning about their programming in a more exploratory manner.

Outcomes center around aspects of a program that led to data that can be reported on, including the number of participants and how they engaged with the program. A more process-centered approach assesses how the program was developed, how it got to where it currently is, and what factors along the way got it there (including staff capacity.)

Ideally, you’d develop a process that addresses both. However, the approach the client wants to take can ultimately decide if you’re going to have a great time partnering with this client or spend most of your time arguing back and forth.

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24 Apr, 2019

Self Care Corner: Beware of “Greener Grass” Syndrome

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:32:35-04:00April 24th, 2019|Categories: Self & Community Care|Tags: self care, Self Care Corner|0 Comments

You’ll never know what your neighbor had to do to get their grass this green

Recently, someone told me they envied me.

When I asked why, they commented that since I work for myself, am not married or are a parent, I control how I spend my time and who I work with, that my life is relatively peaceful, and I don’t share anything personal about myself.

True. I rarely have the “Sunday Blues” (that feeling of anxiety, sadness, or depression many feel as the work week approaches), my time is my own for the most part, and I don’t have many of the stressors that many people deal with.

But they deduced this based on what I post on social media of all places.

If you follow me on any of my social media platforms, you’ll notice that I rarely, if ever, share completely personal things about myself these days, and if I do it’s usually tied back into my brand somehow. On my blog, I’ve shared some insights into my life, from the impact of my mother’s death to my IUD insertion experience and my annoyances with the social work profession, among other things. And every so often I’ll post a great concert I went to (like Emily King, Robert Glasper or Anderson Paak), something that inspires me about living in New York City, or my images from my twin’s bridal shower on my social media.

When I’m struggling with something(s), my family, close friends, and my journal will hear about it before I consider posting about it on my blog or on social media. And while it does help to know that we’re not alone in what we’re going through, we also have a right to privacy.

There’s been a lot of talk about how social media is really impacting how we view the world and ourselves. We’re absorbing information like never before, and much of it we resort to conclusions about even if we don’t know the full story.

And even if it’s not something deeply personal, you also don’t have to share it for the world to see.

Now more than ever, it’s important to realize that what we see and how we perceive it may not be the full story. We can come to our own conclusions and still clamor to know more information, but we’re in our rights to disclose what we want.

It’s like standing in your front yard, lamenting over how your grass looks while your neighbor’s grass is vibrantly green. There could be nothing wrong with how your grass looks, but you’re just curious about how your neighbor was able to get their grass that color green.

You can conclude that your neighbor’s been feeding their grass some state-of-the-art or expensive lawn food. But you don’t know what your neighbor had to do to get their grass that color green.

You could ask and a few things could happen: They might not disclose how they did it. They can tell you what they’re using and can recommend you try it (and you can try it and discover it doesn’t work for your lawn). Or you find out that they didn’t do anything differently from what you’ve done; their grass just ended up being that color green.

I call it the “greener grass” syndrome, and it’s impacting our self care.

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19 Apr, 2019

Try This: Put the Pieces Together

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:31:30-04:00April 19th, 2019|Categories: Program, Service, & Campaign Design|Tags: Capacity Building, program design, Try This|0 Comments

Get clear on your program’s purpose and everyone’s role.

During one of my first major evaluations, I asked the client if I could view the program’s curriculum. As I looked through it, I asked how often the curriculum is revised based on participant feedback.

The program had been around for some time, and while the client was consistent with evaluating the program and drawing out the positive feedback to share with funders, they hadn’t used the feedback to revise the actual program.

During another site visit for this program, I noticed that staff were familiar with certain aspects of the program, but not the program in its entirety, or who was responsible for what. Understandable when you’re dealing with newer versus more seasoned staff. Also, some staff were confused about the purpose of some activities and when each activity was supposed to take place.

I’ve always been of the mindset that, in order to create or revise data collection and analysis tools and processes, you need to have a general sense of program goals and how the program is supposed to function. This is important as staff will come and go. Also, there should be a process built in for revising the program so that it’s meeting the emerging needs of participants.

Similar to putting together a puzzle, it can be daunting to look at the multiple components of a program. Instead of working on the entire puzzle at once, focus on one section at a time so that it all comes together.

This activity is ideal for:

Staff responsible for developing and overseeing the implementation of programs, services, and strategies

Here’s what you need:

Your program’s logic model
Your program curriculum
Bonus: Your most recent program data that gives you insight about the program (compiled and synthesized data)

The process:

Typically with my Try This exercises, I lay out all the steps. For this exercise, I’m going to leave that up to you.

To frame it, there are three parts to this process. First, review your program’s goals and objectives. Second, look at your staff roles to assess 1) whether everyone currently connected to the program is being utilized in ways that align with the programs and objectives, 2) if those involved are utilizing their expertise, and 3) who is responsible for what. Third, review the program’s activities to assess if these activities currently align with the goals and objectives.

(Also, it should go without saying that “program” can also mean service, workshop, training, initiative, strategy, and so forth).

Here are some guiding questions (and feel free to add more):

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Try This: Take a Bird’s Eye View

Tomorrow’s Another Day

Ask Nicole: How Can I Convince Clients to Focus on the Process AND the Outcome?

Self Care Corner: Beware of “Greener Grass” Syndrome

Try This: Put the Pieces Together

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