6 Jul, 2016

How Can Nonprofits Balance Positive and Negative Feedback?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T18:55:19-04:00July 6th, 2016|Categories: Social Work & Public Health|Tags: Capacity Building, program evaluation|0 Comments

When you sit down with your supervisor for your annual review or evaluation, it can go one of two ways.

When your supervisor spends more time on areas that “need improvement”, you may walk out of her office feeling defeated.

And how do you feel when you receive a glowing review? Pretty happy. Makes you feel like you’re excelling.

If you care about what you do, you welcome praise as well as recommendations for how to improve. Too much positive and you don’t feel the need to grow. If you’ve ever asked about things that you can improve of, and you don’t receive much of a response because everything is going well, how do you feel?

I’ve had my fair share of working with executive directors and program directors who only wanted me to focus on positive outcomes. And it makes me suspicious.

Of course, you want the people invested in what you’re doing to be happy. These people—the stakeholders—can range from anyone that is impacted directly on indirectly by the programs, services, or initiatives you’ve created for them.

Stakeholders want to see what’s going well. What’s going well can mean more media, more opportunities and more funding. “Negative” findings (and I use quotation marks because negative is subjective) can also lead to more media, and a lot of nonprofits fear this. Negative findings can give the impression that things are worse off than they really are.

But too much of the positive can give the impression that nothing needs to change. Let’s face it: Some nonprofits are out here designing surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus group questions that are so biased that one can’t expect anything but positive results. And that’s not valuable either.

How can positive findings give your staff the credit they deserve, and how can you address “negative” findings in a way that allows for your stakeholders to see opportunities?

(more…)

15 Jun, 2016

“My Name is…, and I Represent…”

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T18:54:49-04:00June 15th, 2016|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: Reflections|0 Comments

Does you voice matter less when you’re not part of an organization?

This became part of my consciousness back in 2012 when I attended the Strong Families Summit. I was invited to assist with Strong Families’ social media team to highlight the goals of the Initiative, the participants’ general feedback, and how the Initiative can move forward.

As attendees introduced themselves, they shared the basics (name, organization, preferred gender pronouns, and their intention for being present at the Summit), and as they shared the name of their organization, there were a few attendees that said:

“My name is [insert name], and I’m representing myself” or

“I’m [insert name], and I work with [insert name of organization], but I’m speaking on behalf of myself”.

Of course, in discussions around issues pertaining to sexual health and reproductive justice, or any topic that may be controversial, it’s important to raise our own voices. It’s also important to be mindful that what we say may have an impact on whatever group or organization we’re representing.

When I was part of an organization as a front line social worker and direct service provider, my actions and interactions with clients either had a positive or negative effect not only my clients’ impression of me but also that of my organization. Now, as someone who runs her own business, I’ve been able to reflect on the fact that I’m fortunate enough to be representing myself apart from an agency or organization. I’m able to flow in and out of multiple spaces and can be a social worker, program designer, speaker, or program evaluator at any given time, and I can be known for one aspect or all aspects of what I do.

Knowing this, I’m also mindful in how I represent my business in person, through email, or on social media, can impact who wants to work with me as a client. We definitely see this in today’s political climate, sports, and entertainment industries where people quickly lose their endorsements and support.

But back to the original question:

(more…)

8 Jun, 2016

Ask Nicole: What Do You Wish You Had Known Before Becoming a Social Worker?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T18:54:19-04:00June 8th, 2016|Categories: Social Work & Public Health|Tags: Ask Nicole, Social Work|0 Comments

A few weeks ago, I received the following email for a prospective social work student:

I am considering going to graduate school for social work, but I want to know more about the career in general before I do. Could you tell me what you do on a daily basis, what the downsides of the job are, and what you wished you knew before you became a social worker?

I’m always excited to hear more from people interested in the social work profession.

I’ve written pretty extensively on my blog about my role as a social worker, including how I’ve been able to combine my activism around sexual and reproductive health with social work, and my process for testing for and passing the LMSW exam. My primary focus in social work as been on generalist practice, program design, and program evaluation. I’ve written about that as well.

Social work is one of the most flexible fields one can work in. It’s best to decide what you would like to do with a social work degree (clinical, administrative, policy, generalist practice, community organizing, etc.) and then research social work programs of interest.

I’ve been in the field of over 5 years now, and there are three things I wish I would have known about the field before entering: 1) The very real presence of burnout and how it can cripple the most knowledgeable of social workers, 2) you will be limited in what you can provide to clients, and 3) you don’t have to be confined to your annual social work salary.

(more…)

1 Jun, 2016

Ask Nicole: Did You Ever Leave Your Day Job to Run Your Business Full-Time?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T18:53:39-04:00June 1st, 2016|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole, consulting|0 Comments

Blog Post

In 2014, I wrote the blog post “Am I On the Right Track? Evaluating Nicole Clark Consulting“.

I received several reactions, summed up in these ways:

“I didn’t know you were working full-time!”

or

“How are you running a business while working full-time?”

Since that time, I’ve been asked about my progress on the goals from that post, primarily on this goal:

Transition into Nicole Clark Consulting full-time by January 2016

Starting today, June 1, 2016, I am running Nicole Clark Consulting full-time. Yes, I’m behind on my goal by 6 months, but better late than never.

I set the wheels in motion on October 1, 2015, and on the morning of January 1, 2016, while overlooking New York City skyline on the observation deck of One World Trade Center, I knew I was ready. Honestly, I had forgotten that January 1, 2016 was my original full-time date, and decided that June 1, 2016 would be the day I would be full-time in my business.

I submitted my resignation letter to my supervisor on March 31, 2016, with my last day being May 31, 2016. I didn’t mind staying in my position for the extra 2 months as it ended up taking 2 months for my replacement to be hired and trained.

Outside of some family members, a few friends, and some colleagues (both entrepreneurs and my office co-workers), the only people who knew about my resignation were my Raise Your Voice newsletter subscribers. I also wanted to make sure that all of my client contracts were finalized before submitting my resignation as well.

Let’s go back over my progress:

(more…)

11 May, 2016

What to Do During Your First Days with a New Client

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T18:53:02-04:00May 11th, 2016|Categories: Consulting|Tags: clients, consulting|0 Comments

Blog Post Title #2

After reviewing the responses to your potential client questionnaire, meeting either in person, virtually, or by phone, and putting the finishing touches on your contract, you’ve landed a new client.

This is part of the on-boarding process, where you’re brought on as a consultant or contract worker for a new project. And since I do most of my consulting around program design and evaluation work, I’m going to speak within the context of working with a new client who has hired you to either develop a program theory model or to design an evaluation specific to an existing program.

To start, most evaluation projects tend to last for an agreed upon length of time. If you’re hired as an external evaluator, and you’ve never worked with this client before, you’re already at an advantage. An evaluator works with program directors and executive directors to “tell the story” of their program through identifying potential outcomes for the program activities, creating a data collection process that aligns most with the program and what questions the organization is expecting to answer, and analyzing the results. As an external evaluator, you’re the ideal person because 1) you’re the expert, 2) they may not have the staff capacity to do what you’re about to do, and 3) you don’t come with “baggage” (i.e. you’re not intimately involved with the goings-on of the program, thus being more objective and impartial.)

Despite this, being an external evaluation can also work against you if you don’t make good use of your first days with a new client.

Before you start discussing qualitative versus quantitive data collection or what to highlight in an executive summary, you need to understand what’s going on with the program you’re evaluating and the environment you’re going into. It’s like your first day on the job as a full-time employee. The more you know, the more ahead of the game you’ll be. (more…)

How Can Nonprofits Balance Positive and Negative Feedback?

“My Name is…, and I Represent…”

“My name is [insert name], and I’m representing myself” or

“I’m [insert name], and I work with [insert name of organization], but I’m speaking on behalf of myself”.

Ask Nicole: What Do You Wish You Had Known Before Becoming a Social Worker?

Ask Nicole: Did You Ever Leave Your Day Job to Run Your Business Full-Time?

“I didn’t know you were working full-time!”

“How are you running a business while working full-time?”

Transition into Nicole Clark Consulting full-time by January 2016

Let’s go back over my progress:

What to Do During Your First Days with a New Client

This Is A Custom Widget