Hunger in our Community: Evaluating Impact
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The document summarizes a partnership between the San Diego Food Bank and Blueprint Research & Design to evaluate the Food Bank's programs and organizational capacity. Through the partnership, Blueprint conducted an online organizational capacity assessment survey of leadership, staff and board members to identify strengths and areas for improvement. Blueprint also developed evaluation plans and tools for two key Food Bank programs to help measure outcomes and set targets. The plans focused on clarifying program goals, reviewing existing data collection, identifying process and outcome measures, and making recommendations to improve evaluation of increasing access to food, awareness of hunger issues, and access to nutrition resources.
Hunger in our Community: Evaluating Impact
- 1. 1 Hunger in our Community: Evaluating Impact September 1, 2016
- 2. 2 Why did we seek funding from Alliance Healthcare Foundation? Strengthen our strategic plan. Ensure we were collecting the right data and measuring our success accurately. Gather feedback from our stakeholders (staff, board members). Goals for partnering with a research organization: Neutral party to conduct an organizational capacity assessment survey and help develop research evaluation tools for our programs. Ensure we are collecting the right research information to highlight program successes. Partnership Objectives
- 3. 3 Partnership Objectives Conduct an organizational capacity assessment that would help assess strengths and areas for improvement. Develop evaluation plans and appropriate assessment tools for two of the San Diego Food Bank’s key programs. Document both processes so that they can be replicated in the future and/or with different programs.
- 5. 5 Organizational Capacity Assessment Blueprint Research & Design modified a capacity assessment tool for foodbank use. The survey was programmed online so that it could be distributed to the executive leadership team, staff and board members. The assessment focused on six dimensions: Aspirations & Strategy Governance & Leadership Finance & Fundraising Human Resources Program Delivery Infrastructure
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- 9. 9 Evaluation Plan Development Clarified the key goals and objectives of the programs Reviewed existing data collection instruments Conducted a literature scan of similar programs Identified process and outcomes measures Provided recommendations for setting targets Finalized evaluation frameworks for each program
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- 12. 12 Objectives: Outcome Measurement Target Notes Increase access to food for chronically hungry children Student Focus Group, Parent/Guardian Survey Increase awareness of school personnel on how to identify chronically hungry children Staff Survey Increase caregiver awareness of community food and nutrition resources for low-income families Parent/Guardian Survey
Editor's Notes
- #3: Talking points: Jim/Vanessa
- #4: H+Co listened to some of the challenges FoodBank was experiencing and their reason for pursuing this funding from Alliance (i.e. wanting to look at their internal capacity; having a more methodical approach to assessing the impact of their programs to satisfy the demands of funders and for their own internal program improvement) and jointly came up with several partnership objectives.
- #6: The Feeding America Capacity Self-Assessment Tool was developed by Feeding America as a derivative product of the Capacity Assessment Grid created by Mckinsey & Company for Venture Philanthropy Partners and published in Effective Capacity Building In Nonprofit Organizations (2001). Blueprint Research & Design, Inc. modified the Grid and created the web-based version for our Network. Organizational Capacity Assessment Tool: https://mckinseyonsociety.com/ocat/
- #10: Clarified the key goals and objectives of the program: The goals and objectives of a program help drive the evaluation design and inform the key metrics that should be tracked in order to determine whether the program is meeting its goals. Harder+Company worked with the San Diego Food Bank to clarify each program’s goals and objectives. Reviewed existing data collection instruments. Harder+Company reviewed existing data collection instruments for both the Food 4 Kids Back Pack and SONDAS programs. The SONDAS program was already administering a pre and post assessment to program participants. The Food 4 Kids Back Pack program was mostly collecting qualitative data as part of annual site visits with program supervisors. Conducted a literature scan of how similar programs measure success. Examining how similar programs measure success can be helpful in developing an appropriate evaluation framework. Harder+Company utilized information gathered from the literature review to help identify evaluation approaches and tools that could be borrowed and applied to the Food 4 Kids and SONDAS Programs. For example, several Food Bank programs across the country utilize parent surveys to measure parent satisfaction. Harder+Company pulled relevant questions from these surveys to develop a parent survey for the San Diego Food Bank. Identified process and outcomes measures that would best measure program results. Based on the objectives identified for each program and a review of the literature, Harder+Company provided recommendations for process measures (e.g. the number of people being served, pounds of food distributed, etc.) and outcome measures (derived from surveys that measure the overall impact of the program by looking at change in behavior, attitudes and knowledge) that would best measure the results and accomplishments of each program. For the Food 4 Kids Backpack Program, Harder+Company recommended process measures related to program participation, food distribution, staff trainings and CalFresh screenings. A parent survey was developed to further measure program outcomes. This survey was developed using questions from other Food Back Pack programs that measure the goals of the Food 4 Kids program including increase access to food for chronically hungry children and increase caregiver awareness of community food and nutrition resources for low-income families. For the SONDAS program, Harder+Company recommended process measures related to senior participation in the nutrition education classes and food distribution. Harder+Company also assisted in updating questions on the SONDAS pre/post-test to capture information related to changes in participant knowledge, attitudes and behaviors after participating in the SONDAS program. Harder+Company kept and revised some of the original questions in the pre/post-test and revised/added additional questions. Provided recommendations for setting targets. Harder+Company provided initial recommendations on how to set targets for the selected process and outcome measures. Considerations in setting targets include: program budget (this will inform the process numbers, typically), length of the intervention (a short term intervention will likely not have the impact that a longer term intervention could have, so may affect outcomes), and a program’s stage of development (such as whether the program is new and will have a ramping up period or is established, with more predictable service patterns and a documented history of achieving outcomes).