2011 Organizational Learning and Evaluation Conference
The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF) invited their grantee organizations to this two-day conference addressing organizational learning and evaluation. The conference was held May 18 and 19 at the Sheraton Los Angeles Downtown Hotel. Nearly 200 executive directors and lead program staff participated in this event. Conference workshop presentations, listed in alpha order, can be found below.
Concurrent Sessions
Engaging Intergenerational Staff and Board in Organizational Learning
Karen Arnold, FutureDesigsn LLC
Click here to view presentation; Click here to view handout
Staff, board members and volunteers from multiple generations are key to an organization’s success. This is especially true in your organization’s evaluation
and organizational learning activities. Understanding the communication and work styles of different generations can inform an evaluation process that yields rich results, yet understanding how to motivate
and engage your intergenerational staff and volunteers can be challenging. This session will explore various
strategies for facilitating supportive staff and volunteer involvement that will not only benefit your evaluation efforts, but also your organization as a whole.
Fund Development and Evaluation: Assessing Your Revenue Mix
Belinda Teitle, Center for Nonprofit Management
Session did not include a Power Point
Each of your funding sources contributes to your organization's ability to pursue its mission, but the overall mix of funding sources is also important. The question is: what is the right mix? This workshop will provide you with a tool for assessing your organization's revenue mix, as well as approaches for evaluating the effectiveness of your fundraising strategies.
Governance Evaluation: Using Board Assessment
Christina Hicks, Center for Civic Partnerships
Click here to view presentation; Click here to view handouts
Does your board of directors have an evaluation system in place? For many organizations, this question is simply a difficult one to broach. For example, if the
board of directors doesn’t have an evaluation system in place (or has one that’s not working), it doesn’t
seem appropriate for the executive director or other staff to broach the subject. Yet, if a board member
suggests employing an assessment tool to ensure board effectiveness, oftentimes they don’t know where to
start. This workshop will provide you with a variety of governance assessment tools to use and retool to meet
your organization’s needs, offer practical suggestions for starting or reinstituting governance evaluation processes, and outline potential strategies for ensuring board buy-in and support.
Learning What Counts: Lessons Learned in Measuring the Impact of Policy/Advocacy Efforts
Clair Brindis, University of California, San Francisco
Click here to view presentation; Click here to view handout
While many organizations are increasingly incorporating a policy and advocacy agenda as part of their mission, it has often been difficult to fully capture
what strategies, activities, and actions contribute to successful progress in the policy arena. And, to
accept that “not losing”ground may at times be as important as showing policy transformation. Further, the complexity of policy reform makes direct“attribution”to any one organization or collaborative difficult to defend. Thus, evaluating advocacy work often remains elusive — how do you evaluate something
in which the outcomes are long-term and dependent on so many external factors? In this session, we will
explore a framework for evaluating advocacy and policy efforts; use policy case studies derived from
the field of teenage pregnancy prevention and asthma coalition evaluations to understand what insights can
be gained that are relevant to your own organization’s agenda; and consider what “universal”lessons can
be incorporated into successful future policy and advocacy efforts.
Measuring to Make a Difference
Deb Silver, Consultant
Melissa Biel, Biel Consulting
Click here to view presentation; Click here to view handout
This session will provide some basic grounding in the various types of data that can be collected to assess program effectiveness (e.g., qualitative and quantitative; primary and secondary), their advantages and disadvantages, and how data can be
used to document impact and make a difference in an organization or community. Participants will have
an opportunity to share examples and ask questions relevant to their own experiences. Resources on data
sources and primary data collection design tools will also be shared.
Multicultural Approaches to Evaluation
Loraine Park, Harder+Company
Click here to view presentation; Click here to view handout
While many evaluators and service providers now recognize the importance of multicultural and
culturally-based evaluation, a major need remains
for sensible practices and standards within the field. Based on experience conducting culturallybased evaluation for Harder+Company Community Research, speaker Loraine Park will briefly describe
the complexities of multicultural approaches to
evaluation and identify specific strategies based on her
work conducting evaluations in diverse communities throughout California. The session will provide a
practical, checklist approach for systematically thinking through opportunities to increase the cultural relevance of an evaluative undertaking. The checklist helps users identify opportunities to integrate
multicultural approaches throughout all stages of an evaluation including planning, collection, analysis and
reporting.
Organizational Dashboards
Maura Harrington, Center for Nonprofit Management
Click here to view presentation
How can a nonprofit best make decisions based on reliable information on a regular basis? It is not unusual for a nonprofit to have a wealth of data, yet managers and leaders face challenges in sifting through it to summarize and share it with staff, board
and other stakeholders in an efficient and meaningful manner. This session will present the dashboard tool as
a strategy to prioritize, summarize and communicate quality and performance metrics. Participants will
learn how dashboards can assist their organizations in tracking impact and related measures for understanding
organizational health and making decisions informed by
timely data.
Survey Design: Crafting an Instrument That Works
Erika Takada, Harder +Company
Click here to view presentation; Click here to view handouts
Have you wasted valuable time constructing questions for a survey only to end up with a set of responses that are not entirely useful to you or your program?
Were they the wrong questions? Was it the way the questions were asked? Was it how the survey was
structured? Was it the wrong survey type? This interactive session will guide you through the steps of
survey design, including crafting questions and survey instruments and developing a dissemination plan. This
session will also cover special considerations such as culturally competent approaches, budget and limiting
or overcoming common biases. You will leave this workshop with tools to “craft”a survey that will work for you, your projects and your organization.
Theories of Change: Getting Real and Getting Started
Jackie Copeland-Carson, Copeland Carson and Associates
Click here to view presentation
You’ve likely heard the term theory of change. This tool has been used over the past 20 years to help organizations communicate the importance of their
missions and achieve their long-term goals. This working session will answer your questions about the
purposes of theories of change and the appropriate situations for using them. You will leave with resources and tools to help you begin developing a theory of change for your organization.
Tools for Nonprofit Success: Financial Management in Tough Times
Jessica LaBarbera, Nonprofit Finance Fund
Click here to view presentation; Click here for handouts
In this session on financial management practices, Nonprofit Finance Fund provides nonprofit leaders with guidance and tools to manage through challenging financial times. The purpose of this workshop is to help nonprofit leaders develop and use financial information to make better and often difficult decisions, and to effectively communicate their financial story to
funders, board members and other stakeholders. Topics include: assessing organizational preparedness;
evaluating financial risk exposure and tolerance; identifying and quantifying options for responding
to risk; and communicating your organization’s financial story. We discuss tips on cash flow planning,
access to credit, program profitability analysis and scenario planning so your organization is better
equipped to make business choices that help maintain organizational financial health in an unpredictable
funding environment. Participants will leave this session with information that will help them apply
improved financial management and strategic practices within their organizations.
What is Your Impact Story? Using Evaluation for Sustainability Planning
Christina Hicks, Center for Civic Partnerships
Click here to view presentation; Click here to view handouts
You’ve heard it before —evaluation results help bolster your case for support and, ultimately, enhance your sustainability planning efforts. However, counting
community contacts or tracking services provided may only tell part of the story. How else can you evaluate
your programs to show the impact and value-added benefit to your communities? This workshop will provide you with examples of sustainability criteria that can be used to evaluate program and service impact,
identify potential avenues outside your organization for collecting data, and provide you with a different way
to tell your impact story.
Your Communications GAME Plan
Holly Minch, LightBox Collaborative
Click here to view presentation
You know you need a strategic approach to communications and marketing, but where to
begin? This workshop guides you along the steps in developing an effective communications plan for your organization. Being clear about what you’re trying to accomplish and who can help you achieve your goals is key to effective communications. From there, we’ll
examine a wide range of approaches you can explore to engage your audiences and move them to action on behalf of your organization and the issues you care about. You’ll leave this session with a working
GAME (Goals, Audience, Message, Engagement) Plan you can put to work immediately to jump-start your
communications efforts.
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