You understand that monitoring my community initiative can help you:
___Weigh actions against the results to see if we're meeting the goals of the community and the initiative
___Understand the initiative
___Make decisions concerning the programming of the initiative
___Promote awareness of accomplishments
___Recruit support
___Secure funding
You understand these 3 key parts of a monitoring system:
___Process and outcome measures
___Observational system
___Regular feedback on performance
You understand that process measures can be used to monitor the following:
___Members who participate
___Planning products
___Media coverage
___Financial resources
___Services that are ultimately provided
___Community actions
You understand that outcome measures can be used to monitor the following:
___Changes in programs
___Changes in policies
___Changes in practices
You understand that the data you gather by using the monitoring system can help the group in the following ways:
___Data can tell you where the initiative places its emphasis
___Data can point out which groups in the community are affected by your initiative
___Data can reveal which strategies are being addressed
___Data can be used by the staff to achieve a variety of results
Data collection checklist:
___Have key project staff and active members of the initiative keep event logs of all events
The event logs include the following information:
___The month/day/year of the event
___A description of the event itself, including:
- Why it was important
- What happened as a result
___A description of the details of the event, including:
- Who was involved
- What organizations contributed people and resources
- What community sector or objective this relates to
- If this is the first time this event happened
___Complete event logs no later than one week after the event has taken place
___Give completed event logs to the people in the group who are in charge of evaluation
___Turn over the information gathered to the people in your group who will put the data into some kind of organized form so that the initiative can use it in a beneficial way
___Those who organize the information that is gathered summarize the event logs
___The results are distributed to members of the group