When Beth Kanter isn’t being teased by Conan O’Brien about her red hat, she’s contributing and sharing great best practices for the nonprofit community. This week, Beth wrote about a process evaluation project she’s helping with and shares some great tips on writing down issues and ideas while implementing a project.
Taking the time to capture ideas, challenges, and potential solutions during a campaign or event is challenging. Time is often the scarcest resource during implementation of an activity and it is hard to focus on anything other than the next immediate task or emergency.
But, as Beth mentions, capturing thoughts along the way is critical to program evaluation and future planning. Below are a few additional tips to help make this process as smooth as possible:
Course correction
As you begin planning your campaign, schedule a course correction meeting. Having this on your calendar will help all parties know that any issues can be discussed and potentially fixed prior to the event.
Take notes in the moment
When you’re at your event, carry a small pocket-sized notepad and pen to take notes about any issues or thoughts that pop into your head. Be sure to jot down anything that could improve the event in future years.
Solutions-based feedback
For wrap-up, encourage participants to provide potential solutions to the challenges that they discuss. It’s easy for evaluation meetings to become a venting session about a potential issue. Ensuring that ideas for solutions are shared is a great way to keep the evaluation positive and helpful.
Below are a few links from the week’s nonprofit and tech news. Please view our Tumblr for additional news items.
- Direct Marketing News provides tips on created mobile-ready emails.
- The Chronicle of Philanthropy held an online chat to discuss and brainstorm ways to the boost and strengthen year-end appeals.
- The addition of restricted communities to Google+ can be beneficial for nonprofits that are looking for an internal social enterprise tool. TechCrunch describes the changes.
- We encourage you to stop by next week’s Webinar hosted by Guidestar and GoodSearch.
- Finally, for the Bay Area nonprofits- if there is an standout young nonprofit professional at your organization, we encourage you to recognize them for the YNPNsfba Young Nonprofit Professionals of the Year. You can nominate them on the YNPNsfba site.
Justin (he, him) is a Principal and Co-Founder of Social Change Consulting. He has over fifteen years of nonprofit experience, with expertise in online fundraising, digital communications, and data management. Justin helps organizations connect their communication strategy to their income development needs. When he’s not on the clock, Justin is exploring Berlin, running, listening to too many podcasts, and drinking too much coffee.