program design Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Nicole Clark Consulting

12 Jan, 2022

Your Staff Knows Your Programs Better Than You

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2023-03-06T13:59:16-05:00January 12th, 2022|Categories: Workshop, Program, & Curriculum Design|Tags: program design, staff capacity|0 Comments

You know your community better than your funder, and your programs are only successful when staff feel supported and have the capacity to do their jobs.

Your staff knows your programs so much in fact, that when you report to your board of directors or engage new funders, you rely heavily on them to provide details of the nuances of a program that warrants more funding and other forms of support.

As we know, sometimes programs are created in response to a variety of influential factors, including why programs are evaluated. Stakeholder needs (particularly ones with the most power) are a major factor.

One of my first consulting projects was the evaluation of a popular leadership program in New York City. I conducted several site visits to observe the participants and facilitators, administered the program survey and conducted focus groups.

Involving the staff in the evaluation (outside of getting logistic assistance from them) wasn’t on a radar until I started paying attention to their conversations with each other. In particular, conversations around the actual program.

The program’s main location was located in Manhattan, while this program site was in a different borough. I decided to speak more to the staff about their perspectives on this program, its location, and the intricate details that went into running it.

The program’s new site was chosen due to local landscape analysis (wanting to choose an area that didn’t have a program of this kind). This location ran concurrently with the Manhattan location and was chosen to test if the program could be replicated in another borough, provide more community-focused curriculum, and deliver the same level impact for participants living in this borough in comparison to the Manhattan site (which had participants from all five boroughs).

While participants enjoyed having the program in their community (it allowed them to travel less, plus they were able to connect more with local borough residents), what I got from the conversations with staff was that they were frustrated. It had been difficult engaging the local community, from knowing where local resources were from the tiring travel back and forth between all of the sites for this program (including the sites located outside of New York City).

When I brought this up with the executive director, I was informed that a key factor that determined the new site’s location was at the request of a funder, who saw the area as “up and coming” and wanted the organization to capitalize on it.

I knew how problematic this was, and using a landscape analysis as justification was just as problematic. Despite being an external evaluator, I felt that I didn’t have the power to advocate for the staff.

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9 Jun, 2021

You Know Your Community Better Than Your Funder

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T21:09:04-04:00June 9th, 2021|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: program design, Strategic Planning|0 Comments

One of my favorite blogs is Nonprofit AF by Vu Le, former executive director of RVC, a Seattle-based nonprofit that promotes social justice by cultivating leaders of color, strengthening organizations led by communities of color, and fostering collaboration between diverse communities.

My favorite blog post from Nonprofit AF is “Answers on grant proposals if nonprofits were brutally honest with funders“.

In the post, Vu mentions the imbalance of power between funders and nonprofits, leading to a lack of honest communication and feedback. This often shows up in grant applications for program funding. Vu writes:

“It’s not that we nonprofits lie when writing proposals, it’s just that…we’ve been trained to tell funders exactly what we think y’all want to hear, sugarcoating everything in jargon and BS.”

When I’ve had discovery calls with client organizations who want an evaluation done on a program, we’ve discuss program and evaluation goals. The staff member usually begins with, “Our funder wants…” or “Our funder is looking for…”

This reminds me of an earlier evaluation project I conducted. The program was very popular and attracted participants throughout the city. The executive director wanted to create a trial version of the program that would only accept participants from the same area of the city. The location of the trial program was in an area that’s now very popular, but was up and coming at the time.

I did a few site visits and observed that staff (the ones that worked exclusively at this location and ones that travelled between several program sites) were frustrated with not knowing what resources were in the area as well as who the key players were in order to build community relationships. Though the participants enjoyed not having to travel far to participate in the program, staff felt their time would have been better spent in areas of the city where they already had established relationships.

At some point, I asked the executive director for the rationale for the trial program being in this area. I was told that the funder was interested in having the program there. Staff conducted a community scan of similar programs in the area and discovered that there were none. Being the only program of its kind in the area was great from a funder’s perspective, but that still didn’t lesson the staff’s frustration. When the program ended, I included in my program evaluation report that staff support, staff input on program locations, and aligning staff expertise with funder vision should be prioritized so that staff feel successful in continuing with the trial program.

Since that time, I’ve asked during discovery calls, “Who knows your community more? You or your funder?”

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21 Oct, 2020

Try This: A Simple Way to Get Program Feedback

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T21:00:38-04:00October 21st, 2020|Categories: Research & Evaluation|Tags: program design, program evaluation, Try This|0 Comments

*Try this out and let me know how it goes.*

I enjoy coming up with things on the fly, and today’s Try This is one of those moments.

I was hired by a client organization earlier on in my consulting business to conduct several focus groups for their program participants, all of whom were young high school girls attending a 6-week summer program.

During the first two focus groups, one question I asked was, “What would you change about this program?”

Interestingly, the participants enjoyed the program so much that they didn’t have any ideas on how they could improve the program.

When I got to the last two focus groups, I decided to change the question.

Before I share how I changed the question, let’s make one thing clear: It’s very possible your program participants really do enjoy your program, and there’s a lot of information to glean from this. But this client organization specifically wanted feedback on how to evolve the program and they noticed that, outside of exclaiming they enjoy the program, participants didn’t give in prior feedback on what they enjoyed and what they’d like to see based on previous evaluations.

In response to my client’s request, I shifted the question.

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:

Whatever setup you use for focus groups (though this can also be created as a survey, key informant interview, or as a World Cafe)

The steps:

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8 Jul, 2020

Your Plan B Should Be as Strong as Your Plan A

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:56:28-04:00July 8th, 2020|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: program design, Strategic Planning|0 Comments

I don’t like flying, but I do because I enjoy experiencing new locations, plus all of my family lives in Georgia and the majority of my current client organizations are not based in Washington, DC where I’m located.

It’s already unsettling being propelled through the air at 36,000 feet in a cylindrical tube, but one of the scariest aspects of flying for me is knowing that a twin-engine aircraft can fly with just one engine, at best, At worst, that aircraft can lose power in both engines and still travel for another 70 miles before reaching the ground.

Something like this should be scary, but what keeps me somewhat calm is knowing that pilots are highly trained and can handle most mechanical and weather situations (turbulence, ugh).

Can you imagine if pilots had to figure out how to land a plane without practicing? In addition to hours of training and the lessons learned in past aviation incidents, pilots learn how to communicate the relevant information to Air Traffic Control and flight crew.

So how does this apply to implementing your programs and services?

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

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

As I move through the COVID-19 pandemic along with my clients, I see that my former supervisor and I were both right.

We’re living in uncertain times, and this was before the coronavirus pandemic. We’re used to routine and structure (Plan A). Even if everything is going well, there’s always something you can do to strengthen your programs and services (Your Plan B).

Planes are designed that in the event one or both engines fail, you can still glide and land safely. So, how can you build your Plan B?

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17 Jun, 2020

Try This: Pivot Your Programs & Services

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:51:11-04:00June 17th, 2020|Categories: Workshop, Program, & Curriculum 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

Your Staff Knows Your Programs Better Than You

You Know Your Community Better Than Your Funder

Try This: A Simple Way to Get Program Feedback

Your Plan B Should Be as Strong as Your Plan A

Try This: Pivot Your Programs & Services

This Is A Custom Widget