Table of Contents >
Chapter 39. Using Evaluation to Understand and Improve the In... >
Section 2. Providing Feedback to Improve the Initiative >
Providing Feedback to Improve the Initiative |
Examples | Contributed by Chris Hampton Edited by Vincent T. Francisco and Bill Berkowitz |
Example 1: The Greater Mugwump KidBuddies Initiative
These examples are from a fictional evaluation done by KidBuddies, a 10-year initiative of the Greater Mugwump Community Foundation and the Mugwump Metro Area Parents Coalition. KidBuddies seeks to improve the conditions for children and youth by mobilizing powerful new voices in the community to work on their behalf and to involve adults in the lives of youth in Mugwump. The Mugwump metropolitan area is made up of 4 counties with a population of about 1,008,000, of whom 412,000 are children.
Issues facing the Mugwumpians include:
- Child abuse and neglect (6% increase in current year, 18% in previous year)
- 15% of children ages 1-5 years receive WIC benefits
- School readiness dropped 8% in two years (to 87%)
- High school grad rate is 73%
- Teen birth rate is increasing slowly
- Drug use is increasing
A little more background info – KidBuddies has a primary objective of having everyone in the Mugwump area ask what they call the "#1 Question" when making any decision: "Is it good for the children?" In addition, the main program goals are:
- To increase involvement of adults in the lives of their own children
- To increase involvement of adults in the lives of other people's children
- To increase numbers of individuals able to influence policies that affect children and youth
- To develop a vehicle for people who want to support children and youth but are limited by time and circumstances
Program objectives are:
- To get public officials to adopt what they call the "#1 Question" as a guide when making any public policy decisions: "Is it good for the children?"
- To double volunteerism among adults in 3 years
- To increase volunteerism among youth by 10%
- To increase positive alternatives to youth violence
- To increase immunization rates to 90%
- To establish a public/private youth fund to open schools after regular hours
Jerrell Green, director of KidBuddies, recently did a feedback presentation with his staff. Let's let him tell us how it went...
"Well, I wanted to begin with an overall statement summing up how the initiative is doing, and of course I wanted to be really positive about it. So I started off by talking about how many community changes have been facilitated by our partnership and some of our more successful efforts--like our immunization campaign. I wanted the staff to be as excited as I was about how great things looked in our evaluation, so I didn't want to focus them on any weaker points right off the bat. So I told them that the overall evaluation was really fabulous and tried to present the data to the group as a good thing.
“Next I showed the graphs that illustrated our evaluation results. We didn't really have one that showed process measures or I would have started with it, but I had a great one of community changes grouped by which objective each one fit that really showed what some of our intermediate outcomes have been. Take a look at this:
"They really felt great about how much of a difference we'd been able to make, especially in advocacy, immunization and education. So even though we didn't have as much to show when it comes to raising awareness and a couple of the other objectives, the staff didn't feel too badly about it; they just wanted to work hard to bring those up to the same level as the ones we really performed well on.
"The next thing I showed them was a chart about our immunization work - this was one of the ones that shows ultimate outcomes/impact data. You know, it's a good community-level indicator of how kids are doing. Check out how much immunization went up after we got started!
"Anyway, I went on to present the information about the rest of the evaluation results to them and they were so jazzed about how much we've been able to do since we got started. It was really exciting for them to see, especially when I could slap up a big chart that really showed how dramatic the changes were.
"I wrapped up by summarizing the data by discussing strengths of the initiative--the immunization campaign, like I mentioned before, and some of our other strong points. Sure, we could have done more in some more areas--and we will do better in those areas in the future--but I didn't want them to leave the feedback session feeling like they hadn't done a good job--because they had done a good job, and I wanted them to be really proud of that."