Transmission Project - evaluation

Feedback Process Inspires Surge of Support

Howie Fisher — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:43:32 +0000

Two weeks ago the Transmission Project began soliciting feedback from its allies and partner organizations regarding what specific projects we can do over the next few months to help assure our legacy remains relevant to your work in the future. We were impressed by the effort you put forth.

To facilitate the idea-vetting process, we experimented with the All Our Ideas tool, which presented feedback-contributors with two project ideas at a time and asked them to choose the one they would most like to see put into action.

Our petition for your feedback yielded a tremendous amount of participation. During the feedback period from May 2 to May 11, we received 978 votes from approximately 237 friends and supporters. In addition to voting on the 30 ideas that Transmission Project staff suggested, participants proposed their own ideas. We received 6 additional project ideas from our allies, some of which made it to the top of the list.

Using participants’ feedback, the tool calculates a particular project idea’s chance of being chosen over another, randomly selected idea. Here are the top five ideas:

Transmission Project thanks you for your support in giving us your input. We are still analyzing results and taking our capacity into account as we move forward on some of these ideas.

We will say, however, that we were saddened to see that some of the “less conventional” ideas did not make it very far. As per your preference, the Transmission Project will not be engineering a branding iron in the shape of its logo.

For more ways to have a hand in the Transmission Project’s future, visit the Legacy Page.

Honest Practice: How the Public Sector Can Look at Itself (New article in Resources)

Howie Fisher — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:15:47 +0000

We provide here a detailed summary of the article “Honest Practice: How the Public Sector Can Look at Itself” by Howie Fisher with illustrations and design by Billy Brown. Download the full pdf from attachments.

In this article the Transmission Project contests the convention of collecting “best practices” and offers in its place a narrative approach to assessing nonprofit organizations’ capacity building efforts. The Transmission Project calls this approach Honest Practice.

So-called best practices claim to encapsulate successful organizations’ hard-earned knowledge and experience in the form of simple, ready-to-use solutions. Practices are canonized with little regard for what led to success. Research in the field illustrates that what “best practices” obscure is the hard work it takes to get a practice to function correctly in a new environment. The Transmission Project’s observations as capacity-building practitioner attest to the potential pitfalls of blindly adopting so-called best practices.

Although multiple accounts corroborate the risks associated with “best practices,” they remain popular among organizations – primarily as a way to appeal to funders in terms they can grasp. The diversity of nonprofit sector work complicates attempts to establish reliable ways of measuring success while making meaningful comparisons across the field. With the endorsement of funders, “best practices” become a way to discriminate superficially between organizations that do good work and organizations that don’t work.

We explore the depth of the problem. When organizations chase so-called best practices, they under-invest in other forms of overhead. These include evaluation and tracking systems that, when neglected, leave organizations unable to define and measure success on their own terms. The cyclical nature of the problem makes it difficult to address head-on. Without proper infrastructure to measure and understand their work, organizations lose track of their needs and cannot challenge the prescribed standards of excellence.

The fundamental importance of evaluation having been established, the evaluator or researcher emerges as an influential force in representing organizations’ work to funders and the rest of the field. The author suggests that the real challenge is insisting upon a more narrative, process-centered approach to discussing capacity building work as opposed to a myopic focus on success in terms of end results.

The article offers examples of the kinds of qualitative questions writers and researchers can ask. What follows is an analysis of the Transmission Project’s own attempts to evaluate its work without the full support of its funders to do so.

We conclude that while researchers can influence the field by keeping context intact when discussing organizations’ work, evaluation entails not only collecting information, but also processing and integrating it into an organization’s operations. As opposed to relying on “best practices” as markers of success, funders need to provide organizations with the resources to invest in tracking systems to build their capacity to define success, measure it, and articulate what they need to perform better.

Honest Practice: How the Public Sector Can Look at Itself

admin — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:12:20 +0000

An article about the pitfalls of subscribing to so-called best practices. An alternative is offered in the form of Honest Practice: a narrative approach to evaluation that contests the copy-and-paste mentality that plagues our field.

Written by Howie Fisher with illustrations and design by Billy Brown

Outreach Documentation Blog

admin — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 18:56:12 +0000

Corps member Goda Trakumaite describes her Outreach Documentation Blog: “I keep a detailed record of every outreach event I do on this password protected blog accessible to the whole office. Along with some photos documenting the event and a reflection of how it went, who attended, what worked and what did not work, I upload all materials that were either used for or produced during the event. That way anyone can replicate a particular presentation while also making the changes that I might suggest making in the reflections. Despite what that bar on the right says, there are in fact categories - I separate all the posts according to what kind of events they were (screening, classroom visit, etc.). The goals of the blog are to keep track of boring but important stuff like numbers, to have a place to critically think about what happened and how I can better do what I’m doing, and to leave a record for anyone who attempts this job in the future so that their efforts don’t have to begin from scratch.”

Screenshot of blog attached.

SWOT Analysis

admin — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 18:36:53 +0000

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis corps member Ericha Hager conducted at each of the stations participating in the NorCal Regional Collaborative to identify the best points of collaboration within the group. Ericha conducted individual interviews with staff members at each station (and in some cases, group discussions) and compiled a SWOT analysis focusing on the four areas of emphasis within the collaborative (production; education/youth media; fundraising; technology).

Outreach Coordinator

admin — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 18:06:21 +0000

Marketing and Outreach Coordinator

admin — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:17:31 +0000

Event Planning

admin — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 21:02:44 +0000

Outreach and Volunteer Coordinator

admin — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 19:53:58 +0000

Community Organizing and Disability Awareness

admin — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 19:21:02 +0000