15 Nov, 2017

Are You Focusing on The Process or The Impact?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:00:56-04:00November 15th, 2017|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: program evaluation, Strategic Planning|0 Comments

Over the past year, I’ve become intentional in transitioning away from focusing solely on designing and implementing evaluations to working with my clients on building their capacity to do it all themselves.

And sometimes, I like to offer aspect of my services for free as a way of establishing a connection with a potential client. From a skills perspective, this helps me keep everything sharp. From a networking perspective, this puts me on the radar for future paid consulting work and referrals.

Recently, I offered to revised an evaluation tool for an organization providing small grants to community groups seeking to reduce abortion stigma. They want to develop an easy-to-understand evaluation tool that measures stigma pre and post grantee project interventions and measures overall project success.They are finding their current tool–a survey requiring grantees to provide open-ended answers–to be challenging for most of their grantees to understand, and want something that makes the process of giving feedback easier to obtain and to analyze.

In my work with past and current evaluation clients, some themes I’ve observed related to evaluation are A) a level of anxiety around evaluation as a whole given that evaluation tends to get a bad reputation, B) an interest in developing engaging ways to gather feedback that builds confidence in evaluation, and allows them to do the necessary follow-up with staff and the stakeholders, C) a question in how to implement feedback, or D) a mixture of A, B and C.

I see this more so with clients who are more grassroots or have a community organizing background as they ultimately go by direct community engagement for feedback, rather than on evaluations. Also, there is a sense of feeling protective of their programs, services, and campaigns, and no one wants to see that what they’re doing isn’t resonating with the communities they serve. So, finding a way to gather meaningful feedback and be objective of feedback that may be interpreted as negative is a balancing act.

For some background information, grantees receive small grants to develop a project/intervention that speaks to a level of abortion stigma: individual, community, institutional, media, and policy. Grantees have free reign to create what they want, with support from the organization, I made some preliminary edits to the organization’s evaluation tool, and provided some additional feedback:

First, before starting any process, understand what you want to evaluate. In this organization’s case, the current tool focuses more on the process the grantees went through in developing their project/intervention from conception to implementation. This is called a process evaluation.

An impact evaluation, on the other hand, would focus on the impact the grantees’ interventions had on their target audience(s). If a grantee expects A to occur as a result of their target audience(s)being exposed to their projects, did it really happen? If not, what factors may have contributed to this and how can they be addressed.

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24 May, 2017

Asset Mapping as a Community Organizing Tool

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T19:34:14-04:00May 24th, 2017|Categories: Research & Evaluation|Tags: program evaluation, Research|0 Comments

Let’s say you are part of an advocacy group that promotes the health benefits of vegetarianism.

You attend a community town hall where residents speak their concerns over what’s occurring in the community and request resources that can benefit the community.

You stand up to the microphone, introduce yourself and your advocacy group, and make a suggestion to host a gathering for residents on vegetarianism. You share all the good statistics: Eating a plant-based diet high in fiber, folic acid, and a whole bunch of vitamins can reduce high cholesterol, lead to better weight management, lower blood pressure, and reduce the risk of heart disease. You make a suggestion of having your group facilitate a number of workshops in the community.

A resident raises her hand and stands up. Eating lots of fruits and vegetables sounds good and all, she says, but she and other residents have tried unsuccessfully to bring a farmers market to the community. There’s community support for a farmers market as it will aid in increasing food security in the community, but there are concerns that getting food at a farmers market will be more expensive compared to the community grocery store. Also, the community cannot decide which area would be best to have the farmers market. The community grocery store is located near the community’s most used subway station. And speaking of the grocery store–it’s not a very pleasant shopping experience. Not only does the meat smell rancid, the fruits and vegetables look questionable. Many of the items are past the expiration date, and the store’s electronic benefits transfer (EBT) system doesn’t work most of the time. Having a farmers market in the neighborhood will not only give the community another option to buy food, but they can also use their EBT cards to buy items at the farmers market.

Another resident stands up. He’s interested in creating a community garden because he likes the idea of growing his own food so he doesn’t have to deal with the community grocery store. There are plenty of vacant lots in the community, and he knows of a large lot of land near the community’s recreation center. There’s a”For Sale” sign but he doesn’t know the first thing in purchasing land and wants to know if other member are interested in buying the lot with him. In fact, he has no idea how to grow fruits and vegetables.

One of the most social-worky phrase you will ever hear is “meet the client where they’re at”. When you’re working with an individual (or a community, for this example), you may have your own agenda. Despite best intentions, if you can’t understand what matters to the community, their concerns and their successes, you will never find a way “in”. In order to build a connection between yourself and the community, you have to establish trust. Your advocacy group’s ultimate goal is helping communities eat healthier, and this community is interested doing that, but maybe not in the way you envision. So, what’s one way to marry your goal to the goals of this community?

Conduct a community asset map.

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15 Mar, 2017

Reproductive Justice: Your Struggles, Your Recommendations [INFOGRAPHIC]

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T19:28:44-04:00March 15th, 2017|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: program evaluation, reproductive justice, Research|0 Comments

One of my projects for 2017 is the creation of a training series that aligns my business’ primary offerings: program design, program evaluation, and Reproductive Justice.

My original idea was to create a product or service that helps nonprofits evaluate their programming based on the RJ framework, based on my training as an evaluator with knowledge on different types of evaluative theories that I feel best align with Reproductive Justice.

My focus shifted largely based on my experiences with current and past clients. They shared that while they embrace Reproductive Justice, some weren’t sure how they could implement the framework in their workplace, on campus, or in their community settings. Some of their concerns included a lack of overall knowledge around RJ, an inability to explain what the framework is to various audiences, not being in positions of influence where they have the authority to include the framework in their programming and activities, or they see how RJ could fit within the context of their current work (even though the desire is there).

Plus, for a long time I’ve been hired to work with clients in a very siloed way, where they originally work with me in one way, and would rehire me because they see that they can benefit from one of my other offerings. I wanted to create a way to marry program design, program evaluation, and Reproductive Justice, and for it to be useful for clients, community members, students, human service providers, educators, activists, government agencies, and whoever else wants to see Reproductive Justice within the context of design thinking and evaluation theory. In essence, this training and toolkit is my way of intentionally shifting toward teaching and educating the value of design thinking and evaluation (along with Reproductive Justice) so that it becomes more engaging.

In order for make sure this training and toolkit will be useful, I conducted a survey to see what are current struggles folks are facing with Reproductive Justice, how they create programs, services and campaigns (and what are the driving factors behind why these programs, services and campaigns exist), and how they gather feedback that shows the impact of their work on the communities they care about. Using Piktochart, I created an infographic below that shares some of the highlights.

For now, this project is called the “Reproductive Justice Training & Toolkit”. When it launches (which is expected to be in early Summer 2017), it’ll have a catchier title. While the survey is closed, you can still share how this training and toolkit can help you. Email me at contact[at]nicoleclarkconsulting[dot]com and we’ll set up a time to chat.

And now, let’s take a look at the infographic:

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8 Mar, 2017

Try This: Ask Better Questions

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T19:28:59-04:00March 8th, 2017|Categories: Research & Evaluation|Tags: program evaluation, Research, Try This|0 Comments

Starting today, we’re going to ask better questions. Questions that allow you to dig deeper to unearth richer experiences. This is crucial in gaining a better understanding of why someone keeps (or stops) coming back to your programs, products or services.

When I say “dig deeper”, what I’m getting at is being strategic in how we ask questions. There’s a difference between asking questions that allow you to truly hear what someone is saying, and asking questions because you’re searching for certain types of responses.

Digging deeper, goes beyond “I love it!” or “I wouldn’t change a thing”. People are coming back to you for a reason, and these reasons can help you enhance what you’re offering, and can also inspire you to come up with creative and engaging solutions to address other needs that you’re currently not addressing.

Tips and examples

Good questions are:

Unbiased
Empowering
Provide a safe space for the person to feel comfortable responding to
Stretch the person who is responding

I’ve highlighted the last point for a reason. Here’s an example:

Back in 2015, I facilitated a few focus groups for a client, a nonprofit that provides social justice oriented feminist leadership for young women of color. The focus groups were for the organization’s 6-week summer leadership program for young women of color in the New York City area. The organization wanted to know, among other things, how effective the program had been that summer.

Okay, sounds easy. I did a few site visits during the 5th week of the program to facilitate the focus groups. I had my questions ready based on the evaluation questions the organization sought out to explore. During the first focus group, I asked “Looking back on everything you’ve learned during the past 5 weeks, can you share something that you would change?” Some of the responses I got looked similar to “I loved everything!” or “I wouldn’t change a thing” or “Everything was good”.

Initially, I chalked it up to the participants being teenagers. Then I realized they were responding this way because of HOW I asked the question.

So, I tried a different approach for the second and third focus groups:

Looking back on everything you’ve learned during this program, if you could rebuild this program from the ground up, based on your own needs and interests, what would it look like?

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8 Feb, 2017

Try This: Roll The Dice

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T19:05:03-04:00February 8th, 2017|Categories: Research & Evaluation|Tags: program evaluation, Try This|0 Comments

Last month I shared The World Cafe as an activity you can use to engage participants outside of traditional means of collecting data. Today, let’s look at one activity you can use to guide participants in making sense of it all and drawing their own conclusions.

“Rolling the dice” usually means “let’s see what happens”. For this activity, it takes on a whole new meaning.

(Though technically, “making sense of it all and drawing your own conclusions” could also mean “seeing what happens”, but humor me for a bit.)

Here’s what you need

Two boxes that are roughly the same size
12 sheets of paper
A marker
Tape
Tape recorder

Ways to use this activity

I’ve used this activity in two ways: facilitating focus groups and data interpretation meetings.

Focus groups are generally used to gather feedback, and I’ve been asked to facilitate them as part of a program’s evaluation. In this context, each side of the die represents an evaluation question posed to the focus group.

In the context of a data interpretation meeting (also known as a “data party”), each side of the die either illustrates a piece of quantitive data (such as percentages from a survey or a report connected to the evaluation) or a piece of qualitative data (such as themes identified and coded from transcribing responses from a focus group). In simplest terms, coding identifies themes occurring across focus groups, informant interviews, observation notes, etc. With coding you can identify overarching themes as well as themes specific to the group or people in question, and this can be illustrated as a quote, percentage, etc.

Let’s create our dice

Take one sheet of paper
For a focus group: Write out an evaluation question you want to pose to the group
For a data party: Write out a theme you coded
tape the sheet of paper to one side of a die
Repeat for each side until all sides are covered

And that’s it.

Now, let’s see this in action

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Are You Focusing on The Process or The Impact?

Asset Mapping as a Community Organizing Tool

Reproductive Justice: Your Struggles, Your Recommendations [INFOGRAPHIC]

And now, let’s take a look at the infographic:

Try This: Ask Better Questions

Tips and examples

Looking back on everything you’ve learned during this program, if you could rebuild this program from the ground up, based on your own needs and interests, what would it look like?

Try This: Roll The Dice

Here’s what you need

Ways to use this activity

Let’s create our dice

Now, let’s see this in action

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