Archive for November, 2010

Doogie Howser was on to something

Last week I sat in a room filled with hundreds of interesting stories. I attended the National Philanthropy Day Luncheon in Denver, Colorado, which is presented by the Colorado Nonprofit Association herunterladen. This luncheon celebrates individuals, organizations and companies who demonstrate leadership by example in the spirit of philanthropy.

Despite the fact that only a dozen shared their personal road that led to recognition on stage, I couldn’t help but wonder, “What are the back stories of all these people in the audience who share a passion for creating change in the world?” In other words, we all have a story to tell macos catalina installeren. And my curiosity to hear all of them was a testament to the power of storytelling. An even greater demonstration of the love for narrative was the audience’s commitment to each recipient’s remarks filme auf amazon prime herunterladen. Everyone wants the ability to logically connect effort with desired outcomes, and we never tire of hearing how someone has made it happen.

In fact, CausePlanet’s featured author of The Nonprofit Marketing Guide, Kivi Leroux Miller, stresses the importance of storytelling in everything we do because stories generate authenticity and demonstrate transformative ideas and change in people. Additionally, author of Believe Me, Michael Margolis says, “We are hardwired to seek and make sense of the world through narratives. Anthropologists contend that 70 percent of everything we learn is through stories. Even as we grow into stubborn adults set in our ways, we fundamentally remain a storytelling species. This is just one of the reasons why 175,000 new blogs are started every day.”

If the storytelling two by four hasn’t hit you over the head yet, it’s time to get busy and figure out how to convey your worthy nonprofit efforts through storytelling. Doogie Howser was the first televised blogger when he ended every episode with an entry in his digital diary. If Doogie can do it, why can’t you?

Learn more about Kivi Leroux Miller’s The Nonprofit Marketing Guide or our current feature of Festen and Philbin’s book, Level Best.

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How strong is your case for support?

 

Authors Marcia Festen and Marianne Philbin appropriately title their book “Level Best because it means to make your very best effort, and nonprofits can aspire to this level when their performance is backed by solid program evaluation invoice download ebay. “Solid evaluation is the first step toward increasing effectiveness and, in turn, successfully marketing and documenting your work,” say the authors herunterladen.

Level Best demystifies the evaluation process and offers a practical five-step framework that enables more confident decision-making, sound planning and increased credibility (to the community and funders) mp3 downloaden ipad. We asked Festen and Philbin why evaluating impact seems like a daunting prospect to nonprofits and we also asked where to start. Here’s what they had to say:

 

CausePlanet: Your book does an excellent job of clarifying how to go about evaluating nonprofit programs apk datei download kostenlos. What makes evaluation such a tricky proposition to begin with?

Festen and Philbin: Nonprofits often begin the evaluation process prompted by specific pressures from board members or funders who dream of or demand answers to questions that are way beyond the scope of what an evaluation can reveal herunterladen. Evaluation is not research. You can evaluate whether or not a program purporting to teach teenagers about safe sex provided useful materials in accessible language or attracted the intended audience, but you’re never going to know what the program participants actually did on prom night free microsoft games. And even if you could, it would be another leap to be able to definitively claim that your program, as opposed to a thousand other factors, was the key influence that shaped their behavior herunterladen. As our fellow consultant Susie Pratt has said, “Evaluation at best is about providing evidence; it is not about providing proof.”

CausePlanet: The “flow of nonprofit work and the nature of evaluation” is a terrific way to look at the three components of a nonprofit’s work that can be evaluated ecled videos to download. Is there one that stands out as an easier place to start?

Festen and Philbin: What you choose to evaluate depends on what you want to learn google chrome cannot beed. You may want to look at what you do and how to do it better, or what happened as a result of your work, or both.  Generally, the fundamental pattern of how nonprofits function is: there is work, there are results, and, over time, there is impact garmin edge 1030 gpx. At any given time, you may want to evaluate one or more of these three dimensions. Evaluating true “impact” — that is, the cumulative influence of multiple outcomes over time– tends to be beyond the scope of any single evaluation. So in that regard, in answer to your question, evaluating the work you do (your process) or its results (your immediate outcomes) is easier than evaluating impact, which is a long-haul proposition, and can be pretty subjective.

Learn more about Festen and Philbin’s book or our Page to Practice book summary of Level Best.

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Mission impossible or mission accomplished?

What is the difference between mission impossible and mission accomplished herunterladen? According to Level Best authors, Marcia Festen and Marianne Philbin, effective program evaluation steam workshop objekte downloaden. Before you push the snooze button, I read this book cover to cover and found their approach lively and relevant. Yes, I just used “lively” in the same sentence as “evaluation.” And you’ll be glad to know in their world, evaluation and massive amounts of research don’t coexist sims 4 kostenloses. No, Festen and Philbin realize that nonprofits don’t always have the time and resources for mounds of collected data. Instead they introduce a five-step method and the concept of “rolling evaluation,” which makes the whole idea very doable and even better, rewarding or herunterladen. Why? Because their aim is to inform better decision making, save money, enhance marketing and drum roll please, secure funding.

In the age of community transparency, funder accountability and the savvy donor who wants nonprofits to connect the dots between his/her gift and the outcomes, organizations must rise up to meet not just new levels of expectations, but “level best.” Festen and Philbin prove that evaluation is a primary means for determining if your organization is performing at its best spiele kostenlos herunterladen minecraft. Today, I wanted to kick off our month of focusing on evaluation by looking at one of the questions we asked for our interview with Marcia and Marianne herunterladen. You can find the complete interview in this month’s Page to Practice™.

CausePlanet: What is the most common mistake nonprofits experience when trying to evaluate programs sdp album download for free?

Festen and Philbin: Nonprofit leaders sometimes have the impression that evaluation is about gathering massive amounts of data, typically when a project ends, and then somehow sorting through it to “see what it says,” like a photo coming into focus wish app downloaden. Instead, evaluation should begin with a question, your question. Formulating a clear evaluation question guides your work as well as your evaluation because it forces you to consider what it is you want to know about the work you’re doing herunterladen. The information you gather is geared toward answering that question, and the question is fundamentally related to your goals. It is important to remember that the purpose of evaluation is to help you learn so that you can make course corrections when necessary, not to make judgments about what you did in the past firefox downloaden webbrowser. If you are too focused on proving your work is “good,” you lose out on the opportunity to learn from it and enrich it over time. And remember that the best evaluation question is one that is very specific to your goals; asking, “What kind of impact are we having?” is not a good evaluation question. It implies that you don’t know, that it could be anything, that you aren’t consciously working toward something very specific that you have intentionally set as a goal. It is your progress toward that particular goal that you want your evaluation to explore.

Lern more about Festen and Philbin’s book or our Page to Practice book summary of Level Best, which features our author interview.

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