Try This Archives - Page 4 of 9 - Nicole Clark Consulting

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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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

Here’s what you need:

Download the Evaluative Thinking Discussion Guide Download

The steps:

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19 Feb, 2020

Try This: Fortunately, Unfortunately

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:49:15-04:00February 19th, 2020|Categories: Workshop, Program, & Curriculum Design|Tags: program design, Try This|0 Comments

“Fortunately, Unfortunately” is an improvisational storytelling game used in drama classes, with kids, and in group activities.

The game involves coming up with a plot and building on as the story goes.

It’s also a great way to add some program design and evaluation into your staff meetings.

With “Fortunately, Unfortunately”, we’re using this game to review processes and identify outcomes with our programming. Use this as a rapid-fire method to keep your staff on its feet by quickly identifying what went well, what didn’t go well, and how issues were addressed during the program cycle.

To add in the storytelling element, we’re retelling the program and its activities from start to finish, adding in moments of reflection where things went as planned (“fortunately”), where hiccups occurred (“unfortunately”), and how they were addressed (“fortunately”).

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone responsible for developing, running and evaluating programs and services
Students interested in evaluative thinking

Here’s what you need:

A space large enough to fit in your program staff
A space to write on that’s large enough for everyone to view
Something erasable to write with
Your program’s logic model or curriculum may be useful, too

The steps:

Have a program staff member start off, setting the foundation for the “story”. Here’s an example of how the game can go:

“Fortunately, we were able to recruit the program participants we needed. We outreached to our unusual programming participants, as well as from local schools and other programs.”

The next staff member, building on this aspect of the program design, can say:

“Unfortunately, we recruited more participants than we could accommodate.”

The rest of the game can play out like this:

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16 Oct, 2019

Try This: The Cookie Exercise

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:44:55-04:00October 16th, 2019|Categories: Research & Evaluation|Tags: program evaluation, Try This|0 Comments

*You don’t have to eat the cookie, but it might be tempting.*

Evaluative thinking involves identifying assumptions, posing thoughtful questions, pursuing deeper understanding through reflection and perspective-taking and making informed decisions in program planning, implementation, and evaluation.

It’s a key component to building evaluation capacity within an organization, company, or other entity. While I still conduct evaluations for clients, I’m finding myself more drawn to helping organizations build up this capacity so they can do it all themselves.

The primary reasons organizations conduct evaluations is to find out if 1) the program is meeting the needs of its intended audience(s), 2) if it’s financially feasible to maintain the program or service as is or if it needs to be scaled up or down, or 3) if it should be scrapped altogether.

It’s not enough for your staff to know the ins and outs of doing an evaluation. They need to harness the ability to think evaluatively about the programs they’re developing.

And what better way to try this out than with cookies?

Grab 3 different brands of cookies and let’s get started.

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone responsible for developing, running and evaluating programs and services
Students interested in evaluative thinking

Here’s what you need:

If you’re the baking type: Bake three different types of the same cookie (using different chips or filling, different ingredients, etc.)
If you’re the store-bought type: Buy 3 different brands of the same cookie type. In order for this to work, the brands cannot have any recognizable marks in the design that will give clues on who makes them. In other words, you can have 3 brands of cookies that look like Oreos, as long as each brand doesn’t have “Oreo” labeled on them (we’re trying to avoid biases here)
Sheets of paper
Writing utensils (pens, pencils, markers)

As a heads-up: You don’t have to eat the cookies. But you might, for testing purposes.

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24 Jul, 2019

Try This: Find Your Unlikely Allies

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:43:06-04:00July 24th, 2019|Categories: Workshop, Program, & Curriculum Design|Tags: Human Centered Design, Try This|0 Comments

It might seem random, but it just might work.

July is Minority Mental Health Month, a time to bring awareness to the importance of achieving mental health and wellness in communities of color, along with addressing barriers that prevent people of color from seeking and remaining in care.

Let’s say you’re an organization interested in developing an awareness campaign related to positive mental health and wellness outcomes in communities of color.

Your organization’s expertise rests on the mental health side, but you identify potential barriers, based on feedback from your program participants, that may become a barrier to someone with a diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health issue staying in care.

When we’re not feeling at our best, many aspects of our lives take a dive. One of which is oral health. We don’t typically connect oral health to mental health, but some mental health conditions like dementia and schizophrenia have increased decay and gum disease as a consequence of bacterial infection rather than erosion, attrition, or abrasion. Also, people experiencing stress or anxiety may also experience higher levels of bruxism (teeth grinding), temporomandibular joint disfunction (TMJ), and gum disease due to life stressors.

Partnering with an oral health organization or your local dentist office to address this may sound like a completely random campaign, but it may be a powerful campaign just off the strength of how random it sounds.

Many nonprofits and community groups like to conduct SWOT analysis. If you’re not familiar with the practice, it’s a strategic way to identify what’s a strength, weakness, opportunity or threat to the organization, both internally and externally. One perceived weakness or threat is recognizing that there are others who have your characteristics, think the way you think, and are “already doing the work”.

That may be true. But how can this move from being a weakness or threat to being a strength or opportunity?

My suggestion: Find your unlikely allies.

An unlikely ally is someone that, on the surface, we don’t think can be connected to our cause, but they may have a particular strength we benefit from once we do a deeper dive into what their skills are and how we can marry them to our own.

While there may be others already doing the work, there’s a specific way you do the work that makes you stand out. Your unique perspective can be the deciding factor on how many people get onboard with your program, strategy or campaign.

Plus, when you think beyond the people and groups closest to you and start to identify the outlier people and groups who have different skillsets that you can benefit from, it brings you to the top.

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone interested in creating a program, strategy campaign or initiative on a larger scale

Here’s what you need:

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

The steps:

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Try This: A Simple Way to Get Program Feedback

Try This: Pivot Your Programs & Services

Try This: Fortunately, Unfortunately

Try This: The Cookie Exercise

Try This: Find Your Unlikely Allies

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