Equity, Diversity, Inclusion: Action Toolkit for Organizations: "This toolkit includes five assessments that focus on governance, mission-driven programs, partnerships, communication, and advocacy. Each assessment allows you to reflect on your organizational practices and identify areas for improvement.
April Turner, Student and Intern, North Carolina Center for Nonprofits
Evaluation is arguably one of the most important ways to drive improvement. It provides valuable information on what can be changed to improve the services provided. Evaluation can also be used to gather important information to inform other program offerings and services. While evaluations are the crux of driving improvement, it is not always easy to get them right.
Nonprofit program managers ask themselves “How do I reach my volunteers or participants to participate in the activities to achieve the program’s intended outcome or goal?” The next question is often “And, how do we track their participation?” Despite the emergence of affordable mobile technology, staff are often not sure how to decide if an app is the right solution to answer these questions.
Research is tantamount to effective advocacy and impactful programming. In order to maintain program effectiveness, organizations must evolve with the needs of those they serve, and that is impossible if they do not know what those current needs are. Data collection, dissemination, and research are imperative to ensuring that organizational efforts are being targeted where needed. Non-profit leaders need to identify trends in order to surface any gaps and inconsistencies in their programming to prevent diminishing returns on their investment into the communities they serve.
Session 1: Effective Workshop Design
Nonprofit IT Staff Training is a free 2021 webinar by the consulting group, Community IT Innovators, which gives tips on how to develop an IT training program specific to your nonprofit’s staff needs, whether that's better on-boarding, improving on-going training efforts, or re-training staff for a major system change.
The presenters note ways to make this task approachable, such as:
It's through continued effort that policy changes to promote equity are implemented and imbedded into practice. Tracking the progress of equity advocacy is important and does not need to be complex or daunting. Getting Equity Advocacy Results (GEAR) from PolicyLink is a suite of benchmarks, methods, and tools for advocates, organizers, and their allies to track the results of their equity campaigns to:
Systems Thinking Toolkit: Putting Systems Thinking Into Practice in Your Organization - "Systems thinking allows individuals and organizations to understand the complex relationships and contexts surrounding social issues in order to best influence and navigate the system. We have identified several tools that are helpful in this practice, whether you are looking to understand an issue and its system, create a plan for action, or learn and refine as you go.
The BetterEvaluation.org website offers free information and downloads about the Rainbow Framework to help your nonprofit select the correct methods and processes for designing evaluations. It seeks to provide a means to clarify the purpose of conducting an evaluation (e.g.
Basic Guidelines for Program Planning & Management from the Free Management Library "provides guidance toward planning and implementing an evaluation process for for-profit or nonprofit program."
Sections cover the following topics: