Try This Archives - Page 4 of 8 - Nicole Clark Consulting

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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19 Jun, 2019

Try This: Context vs Content

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:39:50-04:00June 19th, 2019|Categories: Workshop, Program, & Curriculum Design|Tags: Facilitation, Try This, Workshops|0 Comments

Like a glass of water, the content of your workshop is contained within the context.

Next week, I’ll be facilitating a presentation and discussion on the reproductive justice framework for a client organization that provides health services to underserved individuals and their families along with partnering with community-based organizations and government agencies.

The client’s project is a learning collaborative that brings together local healthcare providers to adopt best practices for the provision of contraception within primary care, post-abortion, and postpartum settings.

It’s been a while since I’ve presented on RJ for an audience like this, and I’m pretty excited about it. So much so, that it’s reminded me of my goal for creating a Try This blog around the topic of context versus content.

In short, content is what you talk about, while context is how you talk about it.

Think about a glass of water. The content is the water while the glass is the context. Like a glass of water, the content of your workshop (the activities, group discussions, etc.) is contained within the context (or topic of the workshop).

In my case, the content of my presentation is RJ, but I’m presenting the information within the context of clinical and primary care settings.

However, in the client’s case, the participants in the learning collaborative will be looking at how they can provide patient-centered care (content) within the context of RJ.

Another way to look at this consider context within the context (haha) of big-picture thinking. Context is the surrounding atmosphere, the circumstances, perspectives, and intentions that form the foundation of the topic. Content is the activities, details, and events.

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone who has a workshop, presentation or training coming up and you’re tired of throwing together haphazard workshops, presentations and trainings

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 and create a diagram, like this:

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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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19 Apr, 2019

Try This: Put the Pieces Together

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:31:30-04:00April 19th, 2019|Categories: Workshop, Program, & Curriculum Design|Tags: Capacity Building, program design, Try This|0 Comments

Get clear on your program’s purpose and everyone’s role.

During one of my first major evaluations, I asked the client if I could view the program’s curriculum. As I looked through it, I asked how often the curriculum is revised based on participant feedback.

The program had been around for some time, and while the client was consistent with evaluating the program and drawing out the positive feedback to share with funders, they hadn’t used the feedback to revise the actual program.

During another site visit for this program, I noticed that staff were familiar with certain aspects of the program, but not the program in its entirety, or who was responsible for what. Understandable when you’re dealing with newer versus more seasoned staff. Also, some staff were confused about the purpose of some activities and when each activity was supposed to take place.

I’ve always been of the mindset that, in order to create or revise data collection and analysis tools and processes, you need to have a general sense of program goals and how the program is supposed to function. This is important as staff will come and go. Also, there should be a process built in for revising the program so that it’s meeting the emerging needs of participants.

Similar to putting together a puzzle, it can be daunting to look at the multiple components of a program. Instead of working on the entire puzzle at once, focus on one section at a time so that it all comes together.

This activity is ideal for:

Staff responsible for developing and overseeing the implementation of programs, services, and strategies

Here’s what you need:

Your program’s logic model
Your program curriculum
Bonus: Your most recent program data that gives you insight about the program (compiled and synthesized data)

The process:

Typically with my Try This exercises, I lay out all the steps. For this exercise, I’m going to leave that up to you.

To frame it, there are three parts to this process. First, review your program’s goals and objectives. Second, look at your staff roles to assess 1) whether everyone currently connected to the program is being utilized in ways that align with the programs and objectives, 2) if those involved are utilizing their expertise, and 3) who is responsible for what. Third, review the program’s activities to assess if these activities currently align with the goals and objectives.

(Also, it should go without saying that “program” can also mean service, workshop, training, initiative, strategy, and so forth).

Here are some guiding questions (and feel free to add more):

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Try This: The Cookie Exercise

Try This: Find Your Unlikely Allies

Try This: Context ​vs Content

Try This: Take a Bird’s Eye View

Try This: Put the Pieces Together

This Is A Custom Widget

Try This: Context vs Content