Evaluating Program Impact: Our Approach to Performance Assessment

Discerning and communicating the impact of grantmaking and other programmatic contributions are essential to fulfilling the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's (RBF) mission as well as our commitment to stewardship, transparency, and accountability. The Fund's board and staff have found that engaging policymakers on the results and insights gained from our grantmaking, informing the public about our grantees' work, and attracting additional donors to promising institutions and approaches are key activities that help build a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world.In order to bring additional rigor to the Fund's approach to program impact assessment, a committee of RBF trustees and staff was established in March 2012. Based on our experience, the state of evaluation in philanthropy, and a review of literature and activity in the field, the Impact Assessment Committee developed a set of principles to guide our impact assessment approach, defined terms for the purposes of RBF discussions, established several points for evaluation activities in the life cycle of a grantmaking program, and identified opportunities to embed impact assessment in the Fund's regular institutional processes. The Fund establishes its programs in fields and places that reflect its mission and the evolution of its longstanding interests, along with an analysis of the changing global context. The key elements of the RBF's approach to assessing program impact are as follows:* The board approves program guidelines that lay the foundation for the Fund's grantmaking within a program. Guidelines include a preamble that presents the vision and rationale for each program, ambitious long-term goals, and strategies that articulate specific actions the Fund will support to achieve progress toward these goals. They provide guidance to staff and grantseekers about what the RBF is prepared to fund.* A program framework summary, derived from the guidelines, is developed for internal use and includes indicators of progress. These indicators identify anticipated changes in understanding, behavior, capacity, public engagement, or public policy that would demonstrate that program strategies are contributing to realizing program goals.* Within each program, evaluation activities occur on an ongoing basis. Monitoring of the field and of individual grants draws on regular staff engagement and grantee reporting; program reviews, conducted every three to five years by program staff, provide an opportunity to engage the board in a strategic review of progress—often resulting in updated program strategies; impact assessments are conducted by external consultants after five or more years as strategies mature.* The annual institutional calendar provides a variety of opportunities for the board and staff to discuss and review programmatic impact at different points each year and across several years.This approach to impact assessment reflects emerging practices in the field and is consistent with the Fund's values and grantmaking approaches. The committee believes that the approach effectively supports program learning, guides program development, and enhances the impact of the Fund's grantmaking

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Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College

Teens Shine a Light on \u3ci\u3eYoung Heroes\u3c/i\u3e: A Speak Out Military Kids Video Project

A group of military and non-military teens led by New Jersey 4-H mobilized the statewide Speak Out for Military Kids (SOMK) project. The goal is to raise community awareness of the issues facing youth of deployed military parents. This article describes the first step of the project—the design and production of Young Heroes, an 18-minute video featuring interviews with youth who have personal experience with deployment. The SOMK participants not only produced a video, but also mastered new skills while performing a community service. Though recently completed, Young Heroes is reaching diverse audiences

Tools for Addressing the Skills of a Communication-Challenged Extension Agent

In Extension, communication challenges often become more palpable during periods of workload shift when initiatives are started. As an Extension agent and a supervisor who found ourselves in this situation, we took steps to improve communication among members of the program team by adopting four strategies: fostering a supportive environment, defining and communicating expectations, using effective communication planning tools, and maintaining program momentum and work output through supervisor and supervisee best practices. Implementing these strategies positively affected team satisfaction and work output. Other Extension professionals in the midst of breakdowns in communication also may find the strategies we describe useful

Evaluating Program Impact: Our Approach to Performance Assessment Abridged Version

Discerning and communicating the impact of grantmaking and other programmatic contributions are essential to fulfilling the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's mission as well as our commitment to stewardship, transparency, and accountability. The Fund's board and staff have found that engaging policymakers on the results and insights gained from our grantmaking, informing the public about our grantees' work, and attracting additional donors to promising institutions and approaches are key activities that help build a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world.In order to bring additional rigor to the Fund's approach to program impact assessment an impact assessment committee, comprised of RBF trustees and staff, was established in March 2012. This committee continued the work of the Fund's 2003 Foundation Performance Assessment Committee that provided guidance to efforts to streamline internal processes, solicit grantee feedback on the RBF's funding approach, and conduct program reviews at regular intervals to assess program impact. The task for the 2012 Impact Assessment Committee was to further define and embed regular program review and impact assessment activities in the Fund's institutional processes in a manner that supports its program approach and grantmaking style.Principles and Conclusions to Guide the Fund's Approach to ImpactThe Impact Assessment Committee developed the following principles to guide the Fund's approach to impact assessment.* The Fund's impact assessment approach is rooted in its mission and its program goals and reflects and supports the RBF grantmaking style as captured in its program statement. It must be flexible enough to work across the Fund's six programs and their respective evolving contexts.* Given the nature of the RBF's grantmaking, a wide range of indicators and information is needed to understand the impact the Fund is having on a field or issue.* The Fund's approach to impact assessment is action-oriented. It enables staff and trustees to better understand the effectiveness of our grantmaking in light of the context in which our grantees are working, make mid-course corrections as necessary, and identify opportunities to share our insights with external audiences.* Impact assessments focus on the contribution of the Fund's grantmaking to a field or issue over the long term; staff monitor indicators of progress over the near and medium term.* The impact assessment process should add value to Fund and grantee work, not create administrative and financial burdens

The ethics of digital ethnography in a team project

This article draws on researcher vignettes to explore ethical decisions made in the process of collecting and analysing mobile messaging data as part of a team ethnographic project exploring multilingualism in superdiverse UK cities. The research involves observing key participants at work as well as recording them at home and collecting their digitally-mediated interactions. The nature of ethnographic research raises ethical issues which highlight the impossibility of divorcing ethics from project decision-making. We therefore take on board a re-conceptualisation of research ethics not as an external set of guidelines but as the core of research, driving decision-making at all steps of the process. The researcher vignettes on which we draw in exploring this process facilitate a reflective approach and enable us to identify and address ethical issues in our research. In this article, we focus on the potential impact that digital communications technologies can have on the kinds of relationships that are possible between researchers and research participants, and on the roles they can carry out within the project. In doing so, we explore the part that digitally-mediated communications play in the co-construction of social distance and closeness in research relationships. Our discussions around these issues highlight the need for an awareness not only of how our participants’ media ideologies shape their use and perceptions of digital technologies, but also how our own assumptions inform our handling of the digital data

Proactive Planning to Address Budgetary Shortfalls: The Rutgers Cooperative Extension Experience

The Cooperative Extension System has experienced significant fiscal challenges during the past three decades, necessitating proactive responses to enhance revenue received from federal, state, and local funding sources. This article presents an overview of Extension budgetary challenges and the work of the Rutgers Cooperative Extension (RCE) Revenue Enhancement Task Force (RETF). The RETF was charged with developing guiding principles and recommendations with respect to cost recovery and revenue enhancement and tools to help RCE employees think and act like intrapreneurs. The article concludes with lessons learned and recommendations for Cooperative Extension organizations planning similar revenue enhancement initiatives