Capacity Building Archives - Page 2 of 4

17 Aug, 2022

Let’s Build a Partnership

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2023-03-22T19:17:12-04:00August 17th, 2022|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: Capacity Building, Partnerships, Sustainability|0 Comments

Recently, the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) published data on the 2022 pass rate for the ASWB licensing exam. The analysis concluded major disparities in pass rates for Black test takers, older adults, and other marginalized groups.

The data were published as a result of years of advocacy and pressure from the National Association of Social Workers, schools of social work, other social work organizations, and individual test takers. Previously, data on pass rates were never released.

I’ve shared my experience with preparing for the licensing exam before, and while majority of test takers pass this exam on the first try, questions about the fail rates were enough to warrant looking into this. Lack of social work licensure can result is loss of job opportunities for many social workers, so it makes sense to explore why these disparities continue to exist.

This is an example of bringing together a group of individuals who care about an issue, and work together to address it. Test takers, professors, licensing exam prep experts, exam test question writers, and more were all needed for this process.

Part of my role as a facilitator includes facilitating partnership meetings.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identifies a partnership as “organizations that share a common focus and combine resources to implement joint activities, avoid[ing] duplication of effort, ensuring synergy of resources, and enhanc[ing] overall leadership.” From my viewpoint, this also includes individuals who may not be part of an organization but hold a significant amount of knowledge, power, and connections.

Partnerships may develop in response to an emerging issue (such as disparities in test taking scores) and ideally, you’re bringing together individuals that care about the impact of this emerging issue.

A tricky aspect of building a partnership includes understanding the partnership’s purpose and selecting the appropriate individuals and organizations. Every entity mentioned in the licensing example plays a pivotal role in how students prepare for this exam and how the exam is written and administered.

Another aspect of building a partnership is understanding that, while everyone cares deeply about the issue, they have their own ideas for addressing it.

So, how do we bring together various important perspectives to reach a common goal? Here are seven questions to consider for building a partnership:

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6 Apr, 2022

Ask Nicole: Applying Reproductive Justice Beyond Programs & Services

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2022-04-05T09:26:50-04:00April 6th, 2022|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: Ask Nicole, Capacity Building, reproductive justice|0 Comments

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

Reproductive Justice presents an added layer to how organizations engage and hold themselves accountable to the communities they work with. While program design, monitoring and evaluation go hand in hand, it can be difficult to envision how this framework looks beyond programs and services.

From program feedback to developing leadership opportunities, it’s easier to see how to apply RJ to your programming, services, and data driven processes like research and evaluation.

But not everyone in your organization works in these departments.

If Reproductive Justice is an organizing framework that centers the leadership, perspectives and voices of people typically at the margins, how can this be applied in every area of your organization?

Let’s look at one example: Health insurance coverage.

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5 Jan, 2022

Ask Nicole: Improving Capacity vs. Scaling Up

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2022-01-19T10:32:25-05:00January 5th, 2022|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: Ask Nicole, Capacity Building|0 Comments

First off: Happy New Year!

Now, let’s get into the topic of improving capacity versus scaling up.

This is inspired by a comment from a colleague, who has been frustrated with their organization’s focus on scaling quickly, with little regard to making what they’re already doing, better.

I think it’s a complex issue. As an organization, you want to remain relevant and responsive to emerging issues, yet this can be at the expense of improving current programs and services while being being overworked, understaffed, and under resourced.

We see this with businesses that sell tangible products. There’s one company I purchase items from whose business scaled rapidly to meet the demands of new customers at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their business exploded during this time because they sell body products (and we all need body products to stay clean). They’re also Black-owned, and many Black owned businesses have benefited during this time.

The downside was that the supply (and staff capacity) wasn’t able to meet the demand, leading to shipping delays and frustrated customers.

I’ve seen it in the nonprofit sector. Organizations (particularly smaller ones) have a tendency to make themselves appear bigger than what their capacity allows. This can lead to more funding, more collaborations, more supporters, more press, and more opportunities. I’ve stopped being surprised by organizations that are implementing large scale initiatives —whether alone or in partnership—with a staff of maybe 5 people.

I also saw this back in my micro/clinical social work days. In my department, the focus was on getting as many clients in the door as possible, with little regard to 1) staff capacity to do the tasks required of us by leadership and 2) whether the programs and services we promoted to clients were of quality.

We experienced high staff turnover. In response, the department began hosting job fairs to bring in more staff with the promise of lowering caseloads. Which never happened.

This experience shaped my approach to how I work with clients and partners, and I feel in many ways, I’m shifting away from helping organizations raise the voices of women and girls of color (their program participants) to helping raise the voices (and concerns) of staff. You can’t have a program without participants, however:

Programs and services are only successful when staff feel supported and have the capacity to do their jobs well.

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4 Aug, 2021

Ask Nicole: Hire a Consultant vs. Do it Yourself

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T21:12:50-04:00August 4th, 2021|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole, Capacity Building, consulting|0 Comments

I had a discovery call with a prospective client recently, who wants to build an evaluation framework for their staff to implement. The executive director wanted an evaluation framework that was general enough to cover each program but could be tailored to each program’s specifics.

This organization has the budget to hire a consultant, but once the consultant’s job is over, the organization will have to pick up where the consultant left off. That often includes understanding their capacity to implement evaluation activities.

It’s no surprise that many organizations doing amazing work tend to have a small staff. And just like the larger organizations, they focus on the bigger picture and how to measure their impact. (I’ll touch on how grassroots organizations can be more data driven in next week’s blog post.)

They’re getting funding (via their supporters or from foundations) to help build out their infrastructure and capacity to do this data driven work while also being deep within the communities they serve.

“Who will implement this framework and all of its activities?“, I asked the executive director. In order to build an appropriate evaluation framework, I have to understand staff capacity.

It’s not a waste of time or money to hire someone to help. It is a waste of time if the end product isn’t conducive to where your staff’s capacity currently is, which could lead into finding the money to bring in another consultant to help with implementation.

Should you hire a consultant or should you do it yourself?

As a consultant, while my business thrives on being hired to do stuff, the answer isn’t that simple.

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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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Let’s Build a Partnership

Ask Nicole: Applying Reproductive Justice Beyond Programs & Services

Ask Nicole: Improving Capacity vs. Scaling Up

Ask Nicole: Hire a Consultant vs. Do it Yourself

Try This: Take a Bird’s Eye View

This Is A Custom Widget